"The mind is willing, but the body is weak."
This was my sentiment of thought when I finally decided to quit playing lacrosse at age 50, after playing competitively for 35 years.
"The body is willing, but the mind is weak."
This is the sentiment I have now, after officiating high school and youth lacrosse for four years. So I'm quitting.
Getting back into the game of lacrosse as an official has been something I've enjoyed - to a degree. Not playing anymore and having had my fill as a high school coach for 15 years, becoming a high school and youth official seemed a chance to reconnect to the sport I've loved since my teenage years. At age 58, I'm light years away from my playing days' speed, but I can still move well enough up and down the field as an official. Learning the techniques of proper pacing, spacing, and angles from my fellow veteran referees has been immeasurably helpful in effectively doing the job. So my body is willing and capable. My mind and my psyche however, are not. My mental stamina has fallen well behind my physical stamina, so I'm giving it up.
"You fuckin' suck ref!" a player angrily said to me as he walked by, inches away from my face after a game his team had just lost by a score of 17-5.
"You're a fuckin' moron!" an eighth-grader yelled at me after I called an obvious face-off violation against him.
"You're awful...You're a joke...You suck...You're the worst...You're blind...You're one sided...You're pathetic..." are just a few things repeatedly yelled at me from high school and youth coaches this past season.
Walking off the field after one game, one woman, obviously a mother of a player on the losing team, barked mockingly at my partner, Paul: "Terrible job, ref. Way to go!". I turned back to look at Paul as I was a few steps ahead of him. He smiled, unphased, and strolled right past her without looking her way. Meanwhile I wanted to shove my penalty flag down her throat and toss her into the nearby trash barrel. Paul just shrugged it off. Me on the other hand, I wanted to retaliate in ways that would've gotten me arrested.
Out of the approximately 40 games I officiated this year, I would guess that less than 10 of those games I'd consider free of unwarranted verbal abuse or criticism from the coaches and/or players. If I were to include heckling from fans, that number would be cut in half.
What gets under my skin the most is hearing it from coaches who know better. Or should know better. These are the coaches who played themselves, most of whom played in college. They know the game well, and they know the rules. But they watch the game with blinders on, seeing things in a biased way. A blatant infraction called against the opponent is recognized as such, and it's the right call. Yet the same infraction called against his own team is somehow an incorrect and terrible call. If the flag is thrown or a call is made on the other team, then the coach will applaud and commend the official. But if the call is made against his own team, the default reaction of the coach is to disagree and argue the call. Or worse, if his player for example, blatantly slashes the opponent in the helmet and a penalty is assessed, he expects the same penalty to be called when the opponent barely and inadvertently grazes ("brushes") the helmet of his player afterward. Objectivity is non-existent.
On the other end of the spectrum is the inexperienced coach, who typically had a non-existent or limited playing career. He usually has only a few years of coaching experience. This is the coach who, instead of having the desire and dedication for becoming as good a coach and teacher as he can be, focuses his energy on the officiating, blaming it for his team's shortcomings. The "You fuckin' suck, ref" player had this type of coach. Not only were the players inexperienced and poorly coached, they also reflected their coach's behavior when it came to their lack of sportsmanship and character. From the start of the game to the very end, the coach argued and whined non-stop, often about rules he had no clue about. His ire was solely directed at myself and my partner, and never at the poor play and behavior of his players. The adage "Sports don't build character, they reveal it" was on full display this day. Five unsportsmanlike penalties and two player ejections were called on his team, proof positive how players reflect the personality and character of their coach. There's always a direct correlation of behavior, positive or negative, between coach and player. I walked away from that game and made an immediate request to never be assigned to officiate that school again. It was one of three schools I wouldn't officiate again because of the coach.
George, Josh, and Kevin are examples of veteran officials who excel at the mental part of the job. They are able to officiate a game, leave the field, and move on to the next game without dwelling on things that may have made the game difficult to ref. I'm not able to do that. Like my partners, I'm capable of doing my job in a professional and respectful manner. I maintain a calm and collected demeanor throughout the game despite any criticism or insults hurled my way. When warranted, I address any disrespectful or unnecessary verbiage made from coaches or players in a stoic manner. I do so without showing emotion or raising my voice. On the outside, I appear unaffected. But on the inside, my fuse is lit, and it gets shorter with every such encounter. I want to ring the neck of the player that yells, "C'mon...!" or "You gotta' be kidding me!". I want to kick every kid out of the game who I flag for a conduct or unsportsmanlike penalty, instead of just sending them to the penalty box. I want to yell back at the coach who rages like a lunatic over a call that doesn't go his way. But of course, I don't. I stay in control. That's PROFESSIONALISM IN OFFICIATING: 101. For me, that's the most difficult part of the job - keeping my cool when I want to go nose-to-nose MLB-umpire style and give back to the coach what he's dishing out.
When the game is over, and I start up my car to drive home, that internal fuse reaches its end, and I mentally explode in varying degrees. Whether it was one incident in the game that got my blood simmering, or if it was several that got me boiling over, I usually drive home in a silent rage. I perseverate over every negative interaction I had with a coach, player, and/or fan. I replay every angry look and argumentative comment I got from a teenage player. A player with one-tenth or one-twentieth, or one-one hundredth of the talent I had as a player. I hear and see again every trash-talking and posturing moment I witnessed earlier. I hear the coach's barking complaints on a loop. The negative comments from the crowd of spectators echo in my head. All this while I'm driving home, and it lasts, and lasts, and lasts. For hours, sometimes for days. If I happen to be scheduled a future game with the same team and coach that kept me from a regular night's sleep, the cycle repeats hours before the game. I try my best to not let it affect me like it does, but my attempts are futile.
Are all teams and coaches like this? No. But unfortunately, in my experience, they make up a small handful out of dozens. I take no issue when a coach disagrees and questions a call I make or a call I don't make. As a coach myself, I wasn't immune to such disagreements with an official's call (or two, or three...) during the course of the game. That's a part of sports. Referees will make mistakes and are simply not able to see everything that happens all the time. Like a player who makes a physical or mental mistake, or a coach who implements a coaching strategy that ends up failing, officials also aren't perfect. Yet the majority of coaches expect perfection (their interpretation of it) from the officiating. So of course there's no shortage of yelling, cursing, and raging directed at the officials when a mistake is thought to made. Coaches seem to think this is just part of the game, that this is what comes with coaching, that officials should expect the abuse they get, and that it's part of the job. But it's not, nor should it be.
As a two-sport high school coach for 42 seasons, I can confidently say I never acted this way toward officials. I never berated or demeaned an official. I never tried to embarrass one. I never followed an official off the field or court to continue an argument after the game was over. I never got so angry that I questioned my sportsmanship or my role as a good example and role model to the players on my team. And I bet that prior to, or after a game I've coached, no official has said to his partner about me, "That coach right there -- he's an asshole". But that's something I've said many times myself about a lot of coaches whose games I've reffed.
As a high school lacrosse player I got an unsportsmanlike penalty in the first quarter of a game my senior year. My coach benched me for the remainder of the game. The worst thing for an ultra-competitive player like myself, was to watch the game from the sidelines. That was forty years ago, and I've never forgotten it. Lesson learned. It was my first and last unsportsmanlike penalty in 35 years of playing high school, college, and men's league lacrosse. In 700 or so games as a coach, I never received an unsportsmanlike/conduct penalty in lacrosse, and received only two technical fouls in basketball*. (*those two technicals I got were intentional, when my team had an insurmountable lead and I wanted to send a positive, albeit unusual, message to my players about their good play). And I had a strict rule for my players: If you got a technical foul or unsportsmanlike penalty, you were benched for the rest of that game and for the upcoming game. As Coach Knight would say, "There's no better motivator for a kid than putting his ass on the bench." I had zero tolerance for that kind of thing. My players were a reflection of me, and I never wanted to be seen as the "asshole" that shone through my players. If I was going to demand from my players to act respectful to their opponents and the officials, I most certainly required of myself to set the example. My players heeded the message.
Out of all those seasons, the hundreds of games, and hundreds of players, I can count on one hand the number of times I had to bench a player for violating my rule. On the rare occasion when one of my players did or said something I disapproved of, he'd get a deafening earful from me. And maybe some extra "conditioning" as a consequence the next day in practice. I had that power of authority as a coach. As a referee, I don't. It's in my DNA to teach, correct, and discipline young men. I learned early in my coaching years about methodology of teaching by reading about, watching videotape, and attending clinics of some of the best college and NBA basketball coaches. Teaching the game is something I strived to excel at. Now when I see a player needing correction or discipline from his coach and he doesn't get it, it drives me absolutely crazy. As an official, my role isn't what it used to be as a coach. I feel stripped of the role and title I had and identified with as a coach for so many years. I'm left just thinking to myself, "What the hell is wrong with this coach? He has no clue what his job entails as a teacher of young athletes". It's disappointing to see.
The best referees I've known over the years, like George, Josh, and Kevin, are able to find a balance where the positives strongly outweigh the negatives of officiating. A love for the sport, giving back to the game, the endorphin rush that comes during a game, the pride of doing a job well, the bonding relationships made, the impact on bettering and promoting the sport. For them, these things make refereeing enjoyable and worthwhile. Which is why all three collectively have been officiating for more than 70 years. It takes a special type of person with a dedicated and mentally tough personality to do it for that long, and not get burnt out by the negatives of the job. Being able to endure the verbal tirades of the chronically disgruntled coach, or the disrespectful mouth of the 17-year-old punk, for as long as they have is astounding to me. That these guys are able to endure and move on to the next play and the next game without getting discouraged is something to be admired. I've realized that the mental toughness I had as a player I just don't have as a referee. I'm not able to "forget about it and move on to the next play", like I did easily as a player.
I remember my freshman year of high school when it took me up until the last day before spring sports tryouts to choose between playing lacrosse or baseball. Way before there were youth lacrosse programs, I had played and enjoyed Little League Baseball since age six. And although I had a lacrosse stick, courtesy of my older sister's boyfriend, I was totally unfamiliar with the unpopular sport. I gave it a shot, and it turned out to be probably the best decision I've ever made in life. It was a perfect marriage. I decided to give officiating a shot too, but it's just not for me. Being a referee in any sport is often referred to as a thankless job, and I've learned firsthand that there's a lot of truth to that. The result is a shortage of good officials and umpires in all sports and at all levels. And unless coaches, players, and parents collectively stop being the asshole, it's not going to get any better.
