I was going through this old scrapbook put together by my father-in-law and came across some interesting tidbits. Back when I was just a youngster, I coached girls varsity basketball at Payson High School. In an article published on December 15, 1982, I discovered I was quite harsh on officials.  The title of the article, Game turns into ‘brawl’.

The author wrote the following:

I don’t know what the authorities in charge of officials in Arizona are thinking when they send two so called professionals to officiate a game when they don’t even know the rules. I’m not sure that one of the officials even knew what was the basket and what was the ball……..varsity coach Tim Fruth was given a technical for telling the official to blow her whistle (which got a real rise from the crowd), neither official knew where to stand on the court, etc., etc., etc….

The game became a farce and began to get very physical. I think Fruth summed it up best by saying, “You cannot play good basketball when you don’t get good officiating.” (one of the players is quoted in article) “You can’t control your game when the officials don’t control the game.” Junior Varsity Coach Patty Delp said, “I’m all for women officials, but its officials like that that give us a bad nam.”

I’m with her. What I don’t understand is why I’ve never seen such inexperienced officials in charge of a boys’ game……sometimes you will get a bad official, but this one woman didn’t know anything. What happened to ratings?………

I was thinking to myself, what would happen today if a coach, an assistant coach, a player, and a newspaper criticized the assigned officials like this from 1982? Just saying that this was truly a fun read from 30 years ago and yes I was on the other side that dark side called coaching.