“. . .Has Left the Building”

For many years, beginning when our boys were young, I have attended soccer games, baseball games, karate competitions. Cole was 5 when he started playing baseball. He also played soccer for one season and basketball for a couple of seasons. Owen and Levi have both played touch football. Bella just started volley ball. We have seen our share of kid sports.

Today Noah had a basketball game. I have mentioned before that I don’t really enjoy watching my grandsons play basketball. The sport is rough, the coaches are too critical and too competitive. They seem to coach with a mindset of win at all costs. The parents are overly invested in the game and  winning. Some of the parents put the mothers of little beauty queens to shame.

In today’s game, an event happened that I’ve never seen in any young people’s sporting event. In the first period, which was 8 minutes long, the refs called 18 fouls on our team and probably a like number for the other team, and one referee yelled at the opposing coach for some reason. From his remarks I gathered that he thought the coach was being disrespectful to him. We were sitting near the coach, and I didn’t hear him raise his voice. I suppose he could have made a remark that we didn’t hear though. Both officials were being quite unpleasant to the players. Most of the time the referees try to teach the children. When they commit an infraction, they explain it them. Today these guys were just snotty.

When the period ended, both coaches tried to talk to the refs, explaining that these young players were 12 years old and under, not pros. One ref began yelling and told our coach to sit down. Our coach was being polite and never raised his voice. He didn’t impugn the man’s integrity or tell him where to go or make any suggestions that are anatomically impossible. He just looked him in the eye and kept standing. The ref was ready to throw him out of the building.

At that point, the vice president of the league who was running the clock jumped up out of his seat and tried to calm the troubled waters. The idiot referee was having none of it. As a result, the VP tossed the referees out of the building telling the players and the parents that those officials would never be used again. Everyone applauded when they left the building.

The coaches decided to continue to play the game as a scrimmage and reschedule the game, if possible, later in the season.

I have seen players ejected from games, coaches ejected from games, and parents ejected from games. I have never seen officials ejected from games. That was a first for almost everyone at the game, I think.