Always respect the referees

A handful of folks have taken umbrage with a piece I wrote on Tuesday about a game in the Far East High School Boys Division II Basketball Tournament that ended in controversy. Some have suggested that I went out of my way to embarrass or otherwise demean the job that they did during and after that game, and that I harbor a special pet, personal dislike for the group of referees who worked that tournament.

Nothing – I repeat – nothing could be further from the truth. Those who know me well, know that I believe referees – along with tournament organizers, coaches and sports journalists – do jobs in which they please 46 percent of the people 50 percent of the time (I say 46 because 4 percent I believe there ain’t no pleasing). That's just the nature of the job: One side wins, they're happy. The other side loses, they blame everybody.

What I wrote on Tuesday should never, ever be construed as a personal attack against officials. Few hold the respect and admiration that I do for referees and officials of all types in all sports, who have as thankless a job as any you’ll find in athletics, other than student-managers.

Referees have a steadily growing amount of abuse heaped on them as the years pass. Some of the horror stories I read about parents, in particular, attacking umpires and other unfortunate arbiters just cross the line as being totally, utterly wrong.

Clearly, there were things that happened during and after Tuesday’s game that I can’t fathom, because I was not there to see them. That said, in my judgment, something had to be written to account for the events with the best obtainable version of the truth I could find from a distance.

Reader Josh Davis, who formerly refereed games at Yokosuka Naval Base, correctly determined that a scorekeeping error can be corrected any time during the game until the referee and scorekeeper have certified the score to be final. Thus, I miswrote when I stated that such errors are not correctable once play resumes.

Any time the human element is involved in any game in any sport, there is always the chance that mistakes can occur. Nobody’s perfect. Least of all me.

I have stood in the tower, on the floor and on sidelines with a flag calling volleyball matches. I have stood behind the plate bearing the “tools of ignorance” calling balls and strikes. I have called balls in and out as a tennis line judge. I once served as a soccer assistant referee during the course of a league championship match, and made the offside call that negated the only goal of the match (boy, did I learn some new words that day).

In each instance, I was scared to death that I might have to make the call upon which the game might turn. Where Tuesday’s game between YIS-Seoul and Edgren’s boys was concerned, I encountered a case of forgetfulness of the respect I learned for officiating during those instances.

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That said, there was one thing that did disturb me during the course of the Boys Division I Basketball Tournament on Guam, something I took up with the Marianas Sports Officials Association basketball commissioner during the course of the tournament and something he said he would address:

Never under any circumstances should any game official, from the head guy in charge of his team to the scorekeepers and timers at the table, cheer for any team. This was something that occurred frequently when a Guam team would take the court against a team from off-island.

On an island that small and with so many people related to each other, there’s every chance that  officials will be working a game involving a team for which they played or at least went to their school years ago.

Those feelings need to be checked at the door, and kept there even if all one is doing is watching the game from the stands.

After a day or so of watching such a tournament, people visiting from off-island get to know these officials by face. What are they thinking, one might wonder, when they see people who are supposed to be the faces of impartiality taking sides?

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