A Referee Story

So I write about referees sometimes and sometimes refs have the same issues coaches do. They wind up at most matches, so…always going to be stories, right? And of course, officials get blamed for everything.

The thing is–with my blog and talking about coaching, I always try to remain aware of how easy it is to complain about officials or the problems of competitive sports–because ultimately, it’s about more than the scoreboard. Still…this is going to be about the scoreboard.

Before the events of the story, there’s some important context. Against our opponent, we beat them on their home court for the first time ever. The catch? It was in a tournament, so it didn’t count for our Region standings. The match that ‘mattered’ came in October at their place –and they pulled out all the stops to get the win…making it a Pink Night, free admission for high school teams, and all of their other sports teams ended practice so they could be at the game–the works.

Even now in the Region’s history (eight years later), no one other than the postseason #1 and #2 seeds have advanced to the National Tournament. No exceptions–and that goes back to 2004 and the creation of the current basic format of the tournament. Whoever won would be the #2 seed. The other wouldn’t. Effectively–this was the post-season on the line. I didn’t tell my team. No need. Everyone likes beating this opponent. Even Winston Churchill once noted, “In a contest between Satan and [school redacted], I would be forced to put forward a good reference for the Devil in the House of Commons.”

Game day arrives. We’re shaky in the first set but win 25-22 after coming from behind. In the second set, we’re shaky and puke up the set 21-25. That leads to the third set. Give a team a freebie and they start feeling good, they get lucky breaks, and…well, that’s bad. Coaches all know that. The third set does not go well from start to finish. And that brings us to the fourth set with the Good Guys down two sets to one.

At that point, you expect us to get it in gear and have this awesome turnaround, knowing what losing the set means. Yeah! Except…no. We come out and just continue to struggle. –>Our best hitter hit .000 for the match and missed 1/3 of her serves…you get the idea. And so we get to the Bad Guys serving with us trailing 13-16.

[So I went and looked at the stats…oof. Season low for aces, season high for serve errors. 2nd highest BHE for the year, 8th worst team hitting for the year, and worst S/R numbers of October. HOW THE CRAP DID WE WIN?]

Here’s the video by the way, cued up to the moment that this blog is ACTUALLY about. It’s going to lead to a ten minute break in the action. You can skip it if you want–there’s a text description below.

Ok, so…more context. This was a relatively new R1 and an R2 I’d never seen before (and never saw at the host school after this).

The dig hits the ceiling on our side of the court out of bounds then went back to our opponent. The R1 ruled play-on and the Bad Guys scored–he used the beyond-the-field of play ruling that players could go past the stand to bring a ball back, thus making the play legal. So I have a word with the R2.

The R2 told me I can’t question judgment calls–which is correct. I said I wasn’t–I was questioning the rule application, so you can watch her go get the rulebook and point out the rule the R! applied to me…except she had not caught the bit about the ceiling past the midline. So she goes to talk to the R1.

While this is going on, the opposing coach is arguing that play should continue, that I’m stalling the match–and that I should be issued a yellow card.

And then for the only time in my life, I watched an R1 reverse his call. The other coach was mad–when the match was over, she didn’t say a word in the post-match line (my players were observant, knew we’d played like crap…one said “She knows that was the only chance they had to beat us this year. We’re ending their season in two weeks.”)

With the exposition done, I’m writing this because I REALLY appreciate the courage it takes for a relatively new official, working a critical match, standing right in front of the hostile home fans, to reverse a call to make it go against the home team. It takes courage to do that.

It also gets to the heart of the right philosophy of officiating–that it’s not about your own ego as the ref. It’s about getting the call right, knowing the rules–and if you make a mistake, you own up to it and fix it. It’s hard owning up to mistakes–ref, coach, or human being. It’s even harder to then fix the error. (You can see why this has stuck with me for almost eight years now)

*** So then let me add this since I’m all smarmy about the R1 here. On that night, I appreciate the R2 as well. I’ve known R2s who would have blown me off and refused to go over to the R1, refused to even open a rulebook to check. She didn’t–she went and talked with him–and took the rulebook, too.

And though this is the only reversal I ever experienced, we had other officials who owned up to mistakes, often in terms of their judgment on ball-handling calls and such. We had one miss a BHE during a rally–it should have been called but wasn’t (it was a bad whiff by the official)–and as the rally continued (it went a good 30-40 seconds), he just tapped his chest with his free hand to let both coaches know he knew he whiffed on the call. No need for yelling or theatrics by coaches or an R1 to look tough, making sure coaches knew he was in control. Guess what–that control/confidence meant that both coaches just kept coaching–no need for coach theatrics either.

With that, keep in mind something else I wrote about bad officiating. It is incredibly rare for officiating to decide matches–college or high school. If we look at the big picture, we can see that it is the players who decide almost all contests. I mention this because this was one of those moments where officiating made a difference–by being correct, by correcting an error, rather than sticking with an incorrect call.