I agree that officials should model behavior before our young people as they learn the game. They should act with professionalism at all games.
But if you read the other post on "Shortage of Officials" - I believe that the lack of officials is causing an overworking and additional stress on the referees, which leads to shorter fuses, less patience, and being just plain tired. All areas of the state are facing this crisis of not enough referees. Tuesday is almost a gamble when it comes to scheduling games as there was not enough last week for the midlands area and (from what I heard) 8-10 games were cancelled due to lack of referees (Dennis Cook warned coaches that he had a larger than usual number of referees out that day [injuries, illnesses]). Bucky Jones, who schedules in the Charleston area, indicated that Tuesday is a difficult day for him to schedule as well due to not enough referees.
We as a group need to get more referees qualified. We fans, coaches and referees we all need to be more professional and in our roles - modeling sportsmanship for our young players.
