The Care and Feeding of Officials

A big problem in sports that we’re not doing enough about is the poor treatment of our Game Officials by spectators.. Officiating is a tough job. It requires in-depth knowledge of rules, strategies, and the ability to supervise and keep control of all aspects of the game. 

Officials in all sports are concerned that many spectators (and coaches) don’t know the rules and they start dumb arguments. For example, here is one baseball case. There were two outs and runners on second and third, the batter hit what seemed to be a double but he didn’t tag first base. Two runs “scored” but there was an appeal and the batter was called out at first base. Since there had been two outs and this is the third out, the runs were erased. The coach was livid claiming that the runs should count since the out occurred after the runs scored. The folks in the stands joined in, backing up their coach.

The Umpire was right. The coach was wrong - the folks in the crowd were wrong - and they were all guilty of being ignorant of the rules.

We did a survey of several officials from a variety of sports and came up with a lot of their recommendations. Here is a summation of the responses:

What do officials want from coaches and spectators?

1.  Don’t nitpick every judgment call you don’t like. It wears me down and I may finally have to act decisively and you probably won’t like what I decide to do.

2.  Save your protests for situations having to do with rule interpretations. We’ll listen and if we’re wrong we’ll correct it.

3.  A judgment call is just that; it’s the way I saw the play, “In my judgment, he was out.” If you  saw it differently, please consider how close you were to the play and what your line of sight was compared to mine.

4.  Don’t question my integrity or honesty.

5.  Don’t embarrass me - don’t get in my face - act and discuss your concern in a courteous    manner. If you ask me about a concern in a civilized way, I will explain the reasons for making that call.

6.   Don’t ‘cheerlead’ the crowd and get them all ‘het’ up. That’s dangerous and it probably won’t influence the way I’m calling the game.

7.  Don’t allow your players to get on me - their job is to play the game. It’s the parents’ job to watch the game and it’s the coach’s job to conduct his team responsibly. 

8.   Don’t escalate the negative feelings in any way from anybody - parents, players, spectators.   Terrible things may result that we all may regret.

We have all read articles about the attacks on officials (including one that ended in a parent killing an official). Calling a game for kids should not lead to an injury to an official or damage to his car.

There is a significant trend of officials in all youth sports packing it in and saying, “I’ve had it with this business. I love to officiate but I refuse to put up with the insults and rude behavior of coaches and spectators.” These officials are usually paid a very small fee per game and in many cases are non-paid volunteers.

Recruiting - Another great concern mentioned to us by an administrator in the Oklahoma Soccer Association was in the recruiting of new officials. Why would anyone take all that abuse - and most of that for no good reason?

Remember – After all, the Game is for The Kids