Game Example

I’m officiating a 8th grade girls basketball game. The home team is getting clobbered. For most of the game the coach from the home team didn’t say too much. But after it was obvious that his team didn’t have a chance, he starts making commentary on the game directed at me. He made comments like “That’s a travel. That’s another travel. Foul”. I blew my whistle and stopped the game.
I have often found myself here a lot in my career. I’m at a fork in the road. I really only have two choices. I can let him chew on me and turn a deaf ear to him, or stand my ground. Letting him intimadate me isn’t a good choice. Because it shows the kids and the parents that this must be an acceptable practice. So if I stand up to the coach I have shown everybody in the gym that I don’t take crap and they generally fall into line.
I have found that it’s easier to confront the problem head on. So I walked over to the coach, and stopped right in front of him. I said, “Coach, tell me which one you want to do. You can either officiate this game (which there is no way I’m going to let him do that) or coach this game, but you are not going to do both”. He said “I get it, I get it”. With that I blew my whistle and restarted the game and continued in letting the massacre take place.
To his credit he didn’t say anything more to me the rest of the game. Because he knew that I’d take care of him if he did.
Posted on Medium on 3/3/22

Why do people exhibit bad sportsmanship?

If I argue with the referee I will get more calls

This is a logical explanation for people agruing. They don’t agree with the call of the official and they want the official to know about it. I guess they figure that if they act like they were robbed on the last call that maybe I’ll make up for it on the other end of the floor. That’ not how I work. If they make me mad enough I’ll probably call the next couple of fouls on their team. Let’s see how they like that. I really don’t do that, but that’s how I feel sometimes.

I bought my ticket. I can say what I want to.

I think there is a subset of people that have that mindset. But most of us know that isn’t true. You don’t go to the grocery store and do or say whatever you want to. You can’t just stop your cart in the middle of the store and yell out, “I’m done, tally up my cart!”. Most all people know that you need to go stand in line at a check out counter.
These days they make an announcement before the game starts and has this phrase in it “Let the players play, let the coaches coach and let the officials officiate”. If everyone knows their job, then everything will run smoothly.
In my humble opionion, parents are to applaude when their kids team does something good. And in turn, keep their trap shut when something doesn’t go as planned. If you want to tell your kid something about the game you can always tell them at home when there aren’t a hundred people around.
I have recently been attending my grand daughter’s basketball games (it’s first and second graders) and the parents are already being loud and obnoxious. It’s really funny to listen to them. They will say things like, “Get open Greg!”. Now tell me, what does a first or second grader know about getting themselves open during a basketball game. Most kids in high school can even do that! I bet if you asked the parents, then wouldn’t even know themselves.

What good sportsmanship looks like

To me sports is a gateway to making new friends, learning team work, getting excercise and learning how to win and lose. These are all great life lessons that should be taught to our kids while they are small and impressionable.
One year I reffed in this girls basketball league. It was a fifth-grade league. It was composed of girls that had not played basketball before. The girls would grab the ball and just take off running down the court without dribbling the ball. I would blow my whistle and call traveling. The coach didn’t seem too upset, but after the game he approached me. He said, “You have to understand, these girls don’t really know how to play basketball”. “If you continue to call traveling on them we will never win a game”. I told him that it is in their best interest to figure out how to dribble the ball and play by the rules.
The whole season they didn’t win one game. I happended to be officiating their last game that season and something amazing happened. They won the game! The coach thanked me for doing the right thing to make the girls learn the rules and play by the rules. I have never seen such excitement in these girls. You would have thought they just won the WNBA Chamionship!

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