I know what all of you are thinking and I want you to back up and just give me the opportunity to explain myself. Nine year old basketball is very serious and sometimes you have to yell at the refs. I also want to make a disclaimer before I even get started. My mom used to always say that there aren't bad people, there are just good people that do bad things. Well, these two refs were great kids, they were just terrible refs.
I need to give everyone a visual so that this makes more sense. Picture two teenage boys in the chess club that always really wanted to play basketball but never really could. Now picture them decked out in skin tight under armor shirts, shorts and a whistle. By the way, these are probably the founders of the next Youtube, Google or Facebook type company. Anyway, back to the story. They showed up to ref our game. We have really been working with the boys so that they don't travel, double dribble, reach and all the other things kids do when they play basketball. On Saturday, that all went out the window.
We did the jump ball at the beginning of the game and then from there, it was mass chaos. One of the boys from the other team threw a pass that was going out of bounds so the ref caught the ball and handed it back to him so they could continue playing. Another time the ball went out of bounds on the base line and it was the other teams ball going the other way. He didn't even make the other team take the ball out. He handed the ball to them at the free throw line and they took it down the court. In a separate incident two kids were fighting over the ball on our end and I jumped up out of the chair and said, "Call jump ball!!!" The poor kid looked at me, nodded his head and took it to center court for a jump ball. I don't think he ever did blow that whistle and he never would say who's ball it was when it went out of bounds. I think we lost everything we had been teaching the kids in a matter of 20 minutes. They were back to all of their old habits. So when I say I was yelling at the refs, it was because I wanted them to call more than what they were, even on our team. Our entire team except one person played football together in the fall. I will sum it all up by saying that our team thrived in this type of situation.
After some deep thought and contemplation, I finally realized how smart those two kids were. If you don't have to take the ball out of bounds, the clock doesn't stop and the game goes quicker. If you don't have to pass the ball in bounds, you get the same result. Don't call fouls and you won't be stopping the clock either. These guys probably get paid around $10/game. It doesn't take long to see why they were doing this. They were trying to increase their hourly pay rate. In a normal game, they would have made about $10/hour. In this game they were making $40/hour. Since I am one of the volunteer coaches, my hourly rate went from negative $40/hour to only negative $10/hour so all in all, it seems like a pretty fair investment. On the other hand, practice is going to be much longer trying to break all the bad habits again. I guess the important thing is that we won. I mean, that we all had a fun time.
2 comments:
Those boys were HORRIBLE!!!! I took one look and knew it was going to be a bad game and that sounds mean but seriously they looked scared of our boys and about the same size weight wise LOL!! You are a great coach and we are such a better team this year thanks to you and you showed great restraint not really having a fit with them!
From one coach to the other, "I hear ya!" Although I think you give too much credit to their entrepreneurial skills. Let's just call it what it was, bad refing (is that even a word??) Anyways, you won ....... I mean had a lot of fun. Maybe they were distracted thinking about their next chess club meeting.
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