If You Had Kept Your Mouth Shut......

I was Refereeing an 8th Grade Girl's Basketball Tournament.

At Game Time the other Referee had not shown up, but the Game, like the "The Show," must go on, right?

Coaches, Fans, ect, think TWO Refs miss a lot of calls, so what is the chance ONE Ref can see everything?

We were barley 3 minutes into the FIRST Quarter and the Visiting Coach had been hollering at me for every little thing he thought I was not calling. Naturally ONLY things that would have benefited HIS team......

One of his girls stole the ball and off they raced to the opposite end of the floor. I was well behind the play trying to catch up when his player, who could barley dribble the ball while running and NOT being defended, lost control of the ball and stumbled into 2 defensive players. While stumbling, she tried to push up a feeble shot and the ball went out of bounds.

I blew my whistle and awarded the ball to the other team for having gone out of bounds.

At that moment, the Coach comes stomping onto the court, nearly to the Half Court Line, hollering about how I should have called a Foul. It was quite and most definitely unsportsmanship behavior, so I "whacked" him with a "T".

Not satisfied, and apparently accustomed to Referees cowering to his bellows, he took another step towards me and yelled even louder, "That was a HORRIBLE Call. You are an awful Ref!!"

I replied, "You might be right on both accounts, but you are now a coach that has been ejected from the game!" And pointed to the Exit.

Evidently the Home Team had been witness to this Coach's intimidating antics in a previous game - which the other Referees had allowed to go on without any "T's" on the Coach -  and cheered loudly when they knew he had been ejected.

A few minutes later the other Referee showed up - there had been a traffic accident along the way that had delayed his arrival.

He asked if he had missed anything interesting.

Photo by Paul and Cathy (Becker1999) via Flickr

When I responded, "Only my ejecting the Visiting Head Coach 3 1/2 minutes into the game." He commented, "That explains the fellow who confronted me on the way in."

As I looked quizzically at him he continued, "As I walked up to the door to the gym some guy came up and complained he had been ejected from the game. He was rather agitated and seemed like a real jerk, so I said, 'Well, if you had just kept your mouth shut you would still be inside, wouldn't you?' and walked thru the door."

Coaches & fans rarely get ejected for something they do NOT say.

(If you want to find out if this Coach was better behaved then NEXT time I officiated a game for his school you can read about that here. You Decide the Call, Coach!!! )