Referee Interview
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I interviewed an interscholastic referee I've known for about 20 years now. Bill has officiated for the majority of that time, stopping not that long ago. I thought it would be useful to hear things from a ref's perspective. What I found most interesting was when I asked him what the hardest part of officiating was. I was completely expecting him to say "bad coaches" or something along that line. If you don't want me to spoil it for you before you listen, stop reading this now and continue after listening to the interview. So what he said was: parents. I never thought about the fact that it's easier to control coaches where it is normal to give warnings, technicals, and sometimes eject a coach, but there are no technicals for the crowd. Not to mention, your average parent doesn’t have the same sport IQ as a coach or ref, so they can be more likely to get on the ref and not fully understand a situation. Not to mention, parents are inherently protective of their children. I know in the future I will hold the parents of my teams to higher standards, much like they show in a "teachable moment" video for the NFHS coaching course.
| Attachment | Size |
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| Bill-Interview.mp3 | 10.86 MB |
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Comments
My fasher has always said that the most difficult part many games were parents. As you state many parents don't have the sport knowledge that ref's and coaches have and they often have only interest in one or two players on a team. Beyond this there is little recoures for an unruly parent. I know from high school we had one parent permanently banned from all sporting events, although he would usually just come to the visitors sideline and cause just as much of a problem. Its interesting though that a referee would state that the most difficult part of the job was parents. Good job on the interview.
Yes Brady, I would have to agree with Bill. I am a certified baseball umpire and have umpired many games from little league to college and would have to say the parents are the worst people to deal with. Especially when a call has to deal with their little Johnny striking out at the plate or being thrownout at second. I along time ago started telling coaches when before the game I would have a coaches meeting and would tell them that they were in control of their fans and if they got out of control they(the coaches) could and would be ejected. That always seemed to work most of the time. You would see the coaches taking part in telling them to stop and be quiet. It helped to make my job much easier.
Charles, so ejecting coaches for unruly fans was allowed in the league(s) you officiated? I like the idea, I just could see some people having a problem with that.
If the parent or fan is that unruly the official can have them removed from the game. All that they have to do is get the person in charge, usually an administrator from the school, and they will either sit by the person and talk to them for a little while. If they are bad enough they will have them escorted from the event. I have seen this happen multiple times because the coach can only do so much.
Very good interview!!
as officials we are taught that our first duty when showing up to work a game is to find what we call "game managemant", this could be the AD the principle or a janitor on any given night. if a fan is getting out of control or is the inhibiting an officials ability to perform his duties, the official then asks game management to remove that person. i myself am glad we have this proceedure in place for these situations. i havent used it yet, and i hope i never have to.
I have been to a State Championship game where a fan was tossed. The coach of the team the fan was from even turn around during the game and ask the parent to calm down. That just seemed to make things worse and the referees stepped in and ejected the parent. It was good to see because the fan was upsetting everyone even their own team.
I totally agree with Bill. Parents are the worse. I have always had a hard time officiating for the simple reason that parents can be pretty cruel. It is a lot harder to officiate out on the court then to watch from the stands. I think parents create a lot of problems. Such as with coaches also. You always hear of coaches having to deal with parents and I think it is just them protecting they child, but also just the way humans are. Great job, I never thought about interviewing an official. It's nice to see another persons perspective. :)