By Melissa Barlow, WNBA and Naismith Award Winning Referee
No matter the sport these days, we’ve all heard it on television while watching a coach go ballistic on the sidelines – "Wow, that coach is really working the official!" And it happens at every level of sport imaginable. So does "working the referee" really work?
I happened to be at a youth league baseball game several weeks ago, watching a team of 11 year olds play and, as typically happens when I watch sports, I was watching the umpire and how he was managing the game. (Probably the only unfortunate side effect of my officiating career is that I will never be able to watch a sporting event again like a normal person because I have to watch the officials.) The umpire made a debatable call and out came the coach of the visiting team, arguing and yelling and turning his cap backwards so that he could get his face even closer to the umpire’s, just like we see on television. After two minutes of this, the umpire finally ejected the coach, who proceeded to stand just behind the center field fence, where he could technically be out of the park but where we could still hear his ranting and raving. Besides setting a very poor example for youngsters, a subject upon which we could write a whole separate chapter, what did he gain from that encounter? The answer is NOTHING but an early exit to the cheap seats.
When I officiate, the coaches that "work" me the best are not the yellers. In fact, just the opposite occurs. If I have a coach that has not yelled the entire game suddenly jump up and start complaining about something, I know right away that there is a very high likelihood that we missed something. Those that yell constantly throughout the game rarely get my attention and they are easy for me to tune out and I do just that. Players generally will not vastly improve their on-court performance during a game when their coach constantly berates them and I don‘t see many coaches who use this strategy. Why then do we think that this tactic will somehow work with referees? As officials, it is not in our best interests to "mess up" a game. Like many teams, we are also vying for postseason games and championship assignments and the referees who make bad calls generally do not get those assignments. Therefore, we want to perform well just like players and coaches. So if you are a "yeller," you may want to try a new tactic next game. Most of us like to talk and respond much better to that than yelling. Who knows, you may actually achieve your objective as well.
As you can imagine in my line of work, I’m often asked about coaches - the things that they say and do and situations that I’ve been in with them. One of the things that I love about being a referee is, believe it or not, interacting with coaches. Most of them are excellent communicators and are superior at "verbal sparring." My day job is in sales so I love to learn things from coaches during a basketball game that I can use in my other career. Even with that, there are some things that coaches do that are, let’s just say, less effective than other things. I know that they are simply trying to get an edge but these are some pet peeves of mine...
As a coach, don’t tell a player continually to come over and ask me about calls or interpretations. This usually happens during a timeout. I have found that most players hate to do this anyway. How do I know? Because 99% of them start their sentence with "My coach told me to ask you…" That’s a difficult position to put a player in. I will talk to you about any concerns that you have. I wonder how coaches would like it if I kept grabbing their players and telling them to relay this concern or that remark to their coach or to keep them "under control?" I’m guessing not too many.
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