No Call Practice Has to Stop

You’ve heard people say it—that the officials shouldn’t decide the outcome of a game. People say it all the time. Officials shouldn’t decide the game. Let the kids decide the game. What this means is that officials shouldn’t blow their whistles in the final minute—or whatever—of a game, especially not a post-season game. An official shouldn’t call a foul late in a big game. The winning points should never come from the FT line. They should come on a FG. And, the officials should see to it that it happens that way.

And, what it happens is that under the guise of “the officials shouldn’t decide the game,” THE OFFICIALS DECIDE THE GAME!

And we’re not talking ticky-tack fouls anymore. We’ve now come to the point where flagrant fouls are tolerated. This is wrong. This is unethical. It is unsportsmanlike. It is unfair, it is unjust. Not to mention, it is gutless. I ain't buyin.'

Exhibit A

DeLaSalle and Mahtomedi were tied at 39 in a Section 4AAA semi-final last Saturday (March 4) at St. Paul Washington. The players were going about their business of trying to decide the game without official interference when DeLaSalle missed a shot and Mahtomedi grabbed a defensive rebound with 15 seconds left.

Coming out of a Mahtomedi timeout, the Zephyrs swung the ball over to senior guard Marissa Gustafson on the right wing. A DeLaSalle defender rushed out to the wing to defend. Why she—the defender—did what she did, I don’t know. Did she misjudge somehow? Or, did she intend to put a football-style tackle on her opponent? Did she know that the official would swallow his whistle, so that she could get away with anything at that point of the game? Probably not the latter. She probably made a mistake.

In any event, she hit Gustafson like an NFL linebacker coming in unhindered on a QB. She crushed her with a head-to-head, shoulder-to-shoulder, hip-to-hip hit. If it had been a car accident, they would have said, there were no skid marks. So, don't think we're talking about a ticky-tack foul here. We're talking about a foul that was flagrant on its merits. Gustafson of course went down like a sack of potatoes and ended up flat on her back. The ball had already come off her hands before she had gone down, but she went down so fast and so hard that she beat the ball to the floor. It seemed to hang suspended above her for a half-second, then dropped down off her shoulder and out of bounds.

It rolled right straight over to the official standing some 5 feet away on the sideline. He scooped up the ball and promptly signaled DeLaSalle ball.

I've seen somewhere between 2,000 and 3,000 games in person in my long and otherwise boring life. This was the worst, most gutless piece of officiating I have seen since the U.S.-U.S.S.R. in 1972.

Exhibit B

Then, Wednesday night at North Branch, Andover clung to a 46-43 lead over Anoka with about 2 minutes remaining in their Section 7AAAA final. Destiny Cummings of Andover went up and got an offensive rebound and immediately tried to put it back up and in. A defender grabbed her by the arm and gave it a good jerk. The ball never got above her head, and she ended up horizontal to the floor about 3 feet up in the air. Of course she crashed down on her back, and could just as easily have been hurt on the play

Let me clarify that the missed call here was a fairly routine miss such as occurs 3-4 times every game. it was not a flagrant foul and it was not a flagrant error. But, could the "no call" theory have influenced and contributed to the miss? Maybe.

Ironically, this happened just as my buddy and I were talking about the Mahtomedi-DeLaSalle game. Of course, he didn't see the hit in that game. But he saw the hit on Destiny Cummings and he said, See, they do it all the time, as if to say, 2 wrongs make a right. Well, I ain't buyin.'

The MSHSL clearly needs instruct officials to DO YOUR JOB, even if the clock is winding down. DO YOUR JOB. Call the game. Enforce the rules. Protect kids from getting hurt. Don’t reward illegal plays, plays that are obvious fouls in January! DON’T DECIDE THE GAME! Let the kids decide the game. If she commits a foul, dammit, she decided. If you fail to call it, YOU DECIDED.

Now, I’ve said before that I mean no disrespect to DeLaSalle, that De did nothing wrong, that this is all on the official. Well, of course, this statement is based on the assumption that the hit on Gustafson was a mistake and in no way was orchestrated or premeditated. But, that’s my point. What if it had been premeditated? If that were the case, the play would looked exactly the same way that it did. So, we are inviting football-style hits, flagrant-type fouls, we are putting girls at risk, and we are smirking all the way back to the locker room.

Again, this practice is unfair, it's unethical, it's dishonest, it's cynical, it's unsportsmanlike, it's wrong.

No more!