Arbiters of fairness

I covered my first high school basketball game in 1985.

That’s more than 37 years ago.

Since then, I’ve covered hundreds upon hundreds of high school games. I’m not a coach — although I have coached kids as old as 11 and 12 — but I’ve seen enough basketball to know good officiating from bad.

And I’m here to tell you, today’s high school officiating, overall, is as bad as I’ve ever seen it. I suspect there are a number of reasons for this.

First, it’s a thankless job. Who wants to spend their Friday nights running up and down a basketball court while folks in the stands question every call they make? Fans can be horrible. I remember once attending one of my sons’ games at Highland High School and being annoyed at the home fans for the way they treated the officials.

Second, athletes today are bigger, stronger, quicker and faster. That means more close calls where an official has to make a quick decision — was it charging or blocking? Those calls are tough, especially without the benefit of watching a play multiple times on instant replay.

But some officials are just not experienced or, frankly, good enough to be calling games at the high school level.

An egregious example came during the Berryville Lady Bobcats’ game against Heber Springs in the recent CS Bank Holiday Hoops tournament.

Underdog Berryville led most of the second half and had a chance to extend its lead to seven points when senior Mia Thurman drove for a layup and appeared to be fouled late in the fourth quarter.

Instead, Thurman was called for charging. The basket was taken off the board and Thurman went to the bench with her fifth foul.

Heber Springs rallied to win the game. And there was no doubt that if the call on Thurman had gone the other way, the outcome would have been different. Take my word for it, as someone who has seen hundreds of high school games, the call was simply awful.

More bad officiating was on display last Friday night at Bobcat Arena as the Berryville boys hosted Pea Ridge. In fact, the officiating was so bad that longtime Berryville coach Brent Compton finally had enough and protested so much that he was charged with two technical fouls and ejected from the game. It should never have happened. If the officials had done the job they were paid to do and done it well, Compton wouldn’t have felt the need to speak up in order to protect his players. As I told Compton, I’d have probably been ejected way sooner than he was.

As I’ve outlined, officiating is a tough job. But it also has to be tough to be a coach or player who’s worked hard every day in practice and made the kind of sacrifices that one has to make to be successful, only to see all that hard work and effort undone by a bad official. The officials’ job is to ensure fairness, and it’s a sad irony when they’re the ones who eliminate it.