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!!! )

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The Coach Just Had to Ask

I recently worked a Pre-Season Scrimmage where the Home Team Coach questioned the very first call we made...and nearly every other call after that.

This Coach has a reputation for doing that and really annoying Referees.

When I called Traveling after his player fell down while holding the ball after getting a rebound (an automatic Traveling call!) the Coach hollered, "She tried to dribble on her way down! That's not Traveling!"

"Coach," I replied. "I did not see any attempt to dribble. Even if she tried, she fell to the ground while holding the ball, so it's still Traveling."

"No, no, she was dribbling while on the ground! Didn't you see that?"

"No, Coach, I did NOT see that and now your version is changing...Please just let the Refs referee and you can focus on coaching. OK?"

He replied, "Hey, I'm just asking. I can ask, can't I?"

"Coach, you were NOT asking. You were attempting to influence me to change my call, which strictly speaking is a Unsportsmanlike Technical Foul."

"I'm just asking!"

"Coach, you 'ask' about almost every call that goes against your team. Quite frankly, us Referees get tired of all your asking and after a while just quit paying attention to you. THAT can be quite a problem if you want to call a Time Out and we figure you were just 'asking' about something else again and ignore your request."

After that he did not "ask" about any more calls the rest of the game......

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How to get Ejected from a High School Basketball Game

If, after spending the better part of the game yelling at, protesting, criticizing the Referee calls and generally being an abusive nuisance, it might not be a surprise to find out that the Referee's tolerance level for such behavior may be rapidly declining...... In fact, the "tolerance level" may not make it to Half Time......

And if you are sitting right on the sidelines and object to the Referee calling a "T" on a player from your team who throws up his/her arms & does some sort of hopping up & down with his arms flapping up & down in some sort of pirouette/ dance to protest for being called for an obvious Foul and holler VERY LOUDLY at the Ref, who is about 15' away from you, "Ref, YOU SUCK"......You can expect to be ejected.

If you are sitting among the same group of fans that had the first fellow ejected for hollering, "Ref, YOU SUCK," and you object to a player from the same team being called for a Technical Foul for "Taunting" by clapping his hands in the face of an opponent he had just stolen the ball from and scored a basket against saying, "Bring it on, dude!" And you look directly at the Ref who is 5' away from you and yell loudly, "YOU ARE THE WORST REF'S EVER!"......You can plan on being ejected.

And when after the ejection, the husband/boyfriend immediately stands up and sticks a Cell Phone Camera in the same Ref's face and says, "I'm videoing you!"......You can plan on being ejected, too. Politely, but quite firmly and immediately so.

And when the ejected fan "Flips a Bird" at the other Ref while walking out of the gym and the husband/boyfriend yells, "F___ YOU!" (TWICE) at the Ref as he exits, the Ref's pretty much understand why they had to call 3 Un-Sportsmanship Conduct "T'S" on players from the same team in the game (and NONE on the opponent). The kids do reflect their parents......

Oh, and the fan that "Flipped off" my partner said she was going to write a letter to the AIA (Arizona Interscholastic Association) about the "out of control" Referees as she walked out of the gym. I'm sure the AIA will have great sympathy for her grievance......

You can meet such interesting people when Refereeing......

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