Referees and Recreational Sports

Today I had the fun time of watching Ryan play in a football game. Today was his second game, but the first that I was able to see, as last week I was coaching Heather's first soccer game. It was a fun game to watch, though I could have done without certain parents/coaches on Ryan's team yelling at the refs.

Yelling at the refs, particularly in recreation sports, is one of my pet peeves. Particularly when the basis of the yelling is "call it both ways", or "call it fair". This type of yelling it not beneficial, it just becomes sour grapes. Unfortunately a very good game became tarnished by assistant coaches and parent "whining" and "complaining" about unfair calls.

The main reason why this bothers me is because, rather than focusing on why the penalty was called, the coaches missed an opportunity to teach the kids, and instead focused the kids attention on something else--namely the refs. It now became the refs fault that they held the opposing player rather than their own culpability in the penalty.

I wish I could say that I wasn't guilty of yelling at a referee on past occasions. Mine is probably more problematic in that it was done at a church softball game. All though I will admit that the umpire of the softball game deserved it. Its all glass houses anyway.

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