High School Baskeball Player Attacks Referee (Watch)

By James Sheldon on December 15th, 2010

Not a good week for violence in Florida. I thought the state of Florida was supposed to be chill…relaxed…but if you’ve ever lived there, you know that those ideals are primarily reserved for retirement villages and beach towns.

As Ms. Ayles shared this morning, a gun-toting, pissed-off, undereducated dude living in a fantasy world, pulled a gun on school board members and opened fire. On Monday some kid in a high school basketball game went Ultimate Warrior on a referee after being assessed a technical foul and being ejected from the game–that video can be seen below.

You can grasp the gravity of his poor decision by viewing the rest of the players on the floor as the nonsense goes down–they’re in a state of shock.

Having been a high school basketball player, and having refereed basketball games, I understand the displeasure for referees, especially bad ones. On the other side of the spectrum, I understand the referees need to control the “color” or “demeanor” of a game before it gets out of hand. Some referees can’t handle the scrutiny that comes from the coaches, players and especially the crowd. I remember one father threatening to come out of the stands once upon a time, because I supposedly missed his child being fouled.

Unfortunately, a lot of referees will project that frustration onto players, and they just can’t do that. It’s always a good idea for the coaches to remind their players that these referees are part-time refs, not career referees. You gotta keep on playing through their mistakes or questionable calls.

Clearly this poor kid has a few things he needs to hash out, and I hope he’s able to do so.