Sunday, May 2, 2010

Some coaches have no clue........

I got a chance to officiate a youth basketball tournament today (I believe it was considered an AAU tournament). This was some of the items my partner and I observed and/or had to deal with:

#1
In the second game of the day, one team (Red) was just crushing their opponent (Black). Red was using their press defense from the get go and Black was not good enough to handle it. At halftime, the score was something like 31-3. One would think the Red coach would stop pressing and work on something things.

Nope. The Red team kept pressing and the final score was 68-8. A parent from another team that was playing in the next game talked to one of the Red team's assistant coaches about the matter. The parent was told the Red team was prepping for another tournament they were playing in. If Red was indeed prepping, then they have a lot to work on. Their press was sloppy with kids gambling on steals and getting beat. When the kids did get steals, they took quick shots and otherwise did not play fundamental basketball. A better team would have eaten them alive.

#2
In a game between teams I will simply call White and Black, my partner and I had to deal with unruly coaches. Minutes into the game, a White assistant coach was complaining that I missed an out of bounds call. I simply told the assistant coach that I didn't particularly care about what he thought as I saw what I saw. The White assistant coach started complaining even more after that so I told the head coach to calm his assistant down and issued a warning.

On the other hand, the Black team coaches were equally annoying. My partner and I were forced to call several fouls on one of the Black team players. These were legitimate fouls but the head coach was like "You called 4 fouls on one player, what's up with that?" Then he went on to ask me "Did you see what happened yesterday?"

My answer to the Black head coach was "The four fouls were all legitimate. I was not here yesterday so I don't know what happened but it doesn't apply to today's game anyway". Afterward, the assistant coaches for Black started getting into it and I issued a warning to the Black team as well. Three technicals later, I guess the Black team didn't quite listen to us.

All in all, it was an interesting day officiating. It's fine if coaches want to ask questions but these youth coaches sometimes have no idea of what they are saying or doing. I have minimal patience for these coaches.

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