America faces a referee shortage due to parents’ treatment of officials who call their children’s games.
Now, even some coaches are getting in on the act.
Recently, one parent attended her son’s AAU basketball game and witnessed an assault when an opposing coach attacked the referee.
“Today at my son’s AAU game at Spookynook. The opposing team coach swung at the ref. Coach was thrown out,” Lynne Martin wrote.
The sports world was quick to react with disgust to the footage.
“Coach should never coach again. Ref should never ref again. But serious question, why at the end of the video does the coach appear to stay in the game and still coach and the ref is being escorted off the court – why were both not kicked out??” asked Ryan Eisenhart.
“This. This is why there aren’t enough refs and a good portion of them rent great. The good ones don’t want to deal with adults acting like children making it more about them than the kids the claim to care about,” one user tweeted.
“This is the worst of AAU. Thankfully, we also saw the best this weekend…Kids playing hard in front of college coaches, AAU Coaches making small talk with scouts & recruiting coordinators about their players, connecting them to parents etc..” Alex Fydryszewski wrote.
“Unacceptable. Have to be better,” wrote Paul Brownfield.
“I struggle when I see stuff like this at the local level because it should be all about the players. But at a live period recruiting event it is definitely ALL about the players! NOT 1 college coach is there to scout your coaching. IMO should be banned from these events for life,” Sean Strickland wrote.
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