January 30, 2010

  • this is just a venting post:

    Friday night, My daughters and I traveled ;what should have been a 45 minute drive(turned 1 hour and 40 minute drive), to another town, out in the middle of nowheresville; to watch my son's basketball team play against First Assembly Christian school. I quickly got over the major detours and the extended travel in slow traffic and snow. (People in our area creep through snow, but speed across black ice and hydroplane in the rain??).
    So we walk in and I have a seat at the bottom bleachers. My daughters find their friends and go off to sit with them. The game was okay. We came in at the end of first period and the beginning of the second. I watched and cheered and screamed and cheered. {Balls came towards me a few times due to my location.} That was not a problem.
    The problem or what made me so irate was taunting from the opposing . They appeared to go totally unnoticed by the referees,their coaches and their parents.

    We have an autistic ball player that behaves obviously different. Our players have never treated him different. He was just one of the guys when he ran cross country. He is now just one of the guys on our basketball team. All of our people parents,students alike, cheer him on. If he gets distracted we encourage him to watch the ball or get in the game. He got distracted a few times and played with the bottom of his shorts and once with his short strings. Our team encouraged him. I heard someone from their team call him a retard and I saw a player mocking him playing with his shorts and making a goofy face. This action was during the game. I became really disgusted and told a father beside me, that was really unsportsmanlike conduct!! He agreed!

     During half time their cheerleaders did a few cheers. I watched their coaches and the refs.  I think I expected to see a few of the player spoken to by the coaches or refs but  I did not see that. Okay they missed them. Maybe the did not see? I do not know. I was sorely disappointed and brokenhearted at that very moment.
    Game goes on. We are losing by a lot. It's okay.  I felt during the game that to many calls were missed by the refs. Okay fine. Game goes on. 
    By the way :THERE WERE 3 REFS!
    Okay I am over the ugliness by one player. He is just immature. Sometimes refs miss things okay.
    Last straw. We are quickly approaching the end of game, last 30 seconds, opposing team has the ball and they are running down the clock. What are they doing? Making goofy faces and essentially playing keep away with the ball and throwing the ball like something is wrong with them. It was obvious teasing and taunting. Once again I expected the 3 refs or their coach to say something or do something. After all we are supposed to be 2 Christian school teams playing one another. That was very poor representation amongst the children,parents, and coaches. I was ready to leave quickly. I did not know what to say or think of their conduct. If those were my children I would have made them publicly apologize, since the offense was public.

    I was disappointed my expectations exceeded my reality.