Officiating Crew From LPS Volleyball Classic Should Face Discipline
Berk Brown is the founder of Nebraska Prep Volleyball, LLC. He has won 19 awards for his journalistic work during his career, including awards from both the Nebraska Press Association and Minnesota Newspaper Association. In the early 2000s he was a regular contributor for ESPN.com. He has covered, coached and been involved in volleyball for the past 25 years. You can reach him at Berk@NebraskaPrepVolleyball.com.
LINCOLN – My name is Berk Brown and I am imperfect and flawed in so may ways it isn’t even funny. Accepting this has required many baby-steps of maturity over my 40-something years.
Realizing and accepting you’re not perfect is, however, somewhat easier than not expecting perfection from others. We want things
Berk Brownto be right. We don’t want to be wronged or be the perceived victim of something not happening the way it’s supposed to. But, when imperfect people live in an imperfect world we are bound to come across situations where the flaws of others impact us just as our flaws will impact others.
So what the heck does this have to do with volleyball? I don’t know. My therapist says its good to talk about things like this though.
This could, though, be applied to what was a really bizarre Saturday of volleyball on Sept. 17 during the final day of the LPS Classic. I started getting paid as a sports journalist in 1990, which gives me more than a quarter-century of experience covering sports. I’ve never seen what I saw last Saturday – and I’ve seen some weird stuff man.
Volleyball officials have difficult and thankless job. Are they perfect? No, but they’re closer to it than I am, that’s for sure. We’re lucky and blessed in Nebraska to have many, many, many top-notch officials who do a tremendous job. You won’t ever find me saying an official made a bad call. I may from time-to-time say a call was “controversial,” but that’s only to indicate a call that was contested or that could have gone either way.
So, now that I’ve tried to be as polite and delicate as possible in setting up this article, let me get straight to the point about my feelings from the Gold Bracket of the LPS Volleyball Classic on Saturday at Lincoln Southeast.
Based on their actions, conduct and performance while working the matches on the main Prasch court on Saturday, the experienced male-and-female crew working as up and down refs should be immediate evaluated and reprimanded by any and all associations with the authority to do so.
I will not name those officials because I do not think it would be right to do so. But their conduct the entire day and the way they managed the matches drew the ire of pretty much every coach and was counter to the integrity and values of the NSAA and high school athletics in general.
Things hit a contentious point in the tournament’s championship match with Omaha Marian leading Papillion-LaVista 21-18 in the decisive third set of a very well played match. The ensuring rally ended when a pair of Marian players combined for a huge ace block in the middle, which sent players on the Marian bench shooting out of their seats and onto their feet hooting and hollering for their teammates.
For that, Marian’s bench was given a yellow card.
The NSAA uses the National Federation of High Schools rulebook for volleyball. Here you will find Rule 12-2-7, which states, ““Teammates and other bench personnel other than the head or assistant coach(es) (Rules 12-2-5, 6) shall remain seated on the team bench during a set except to:”
So, yes, the rules do state that players are to remain on the bench at all times. Something this officiating crew was hell-bent on making sure was followed at all times all day. More on that later, I promise. The problem with the constant need for the officiating crew to enforce this rule was their blatant disregard for the intent of the rule, which is addressed immediately thereafter in the rulebook in 12-2-7-a, which states that it is OK to, ““Spontaneously react to an outstanding play by members of their own team.”
Never mind the fact that this was the first time I had ever seen anything like that in my 25+ years, what the yellow card on the Marian bench also did was restrict everyone – including head coach Amy McLeay – to remaining seated on the bench at all times. So, at the climax of a championship match, the officiating crew restricted Marian from celebrating and greatly impacted a coach’s ability to communicate and coach her team at a critical moment.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the court, everyone on the Papillion-LaVista bench had their fannies firmly in chairs all along the bench because of a previous admonishment from the up official. What crime had the Monarchs committed? Well, Papillion-LaVista assistant coach John Svehla didn’t sit back down in his chair promptly enough after shagging a ball and the up official let him have it.
I’m serious.
From my seat at the courtside scorer’s table, I watched as Svehla tracked down a ball that had gone out of bounds and he flipped it back towards his player who was serving. Svehla walked back along the bench and, just before sitting back down, glanced over to the Marian side of the court and gave a quick hand signal to his server for which zone to attack. At that moment the up official blew his whistle to stop play and verbalized his displeasure as Svehla had down with a look on his face similar to that of a bewildered child who just had a bully snap his favorite crayon in half for no reason.
Making matters worse for this officiating crew was how obvious it was that they were proactively looking for conflicts throughout the day. Wanting to measure headbands to make sure they weren’t more than three inches wide, constantly chasing coaches to wandered to close to the 10-foot line and so much more.
Their conduct earlier in the day led up to serious discussion taking place as to whether or not the championship match could be moved to a different court with different officials or if different officials could be used in the main gym for the final.
During a semifinal match, Lincoln Southwest first-year coach Mark Novotny got a yellow and his bench was urged repeatedly by the officials to not stand an applaud their teammates after a play. What did Novotny do to ear his yellow card? During a rally he questioned the down official how the net could be bouncing up and down so wildly without a player being in the net. He questioned it politely and in a voice only audible from about 20-25 feet away. He then turned around and dropped his clipboard in the process. He didn’t throw it. He didn’t slam it He dropped it. Upon hearing the noise, however, the down official turned and immediate issued the yellow.
There isn’t much point in going on and on about the other incidents of the day involving the pair. There were more yellow cards. There were more confrontations. And, it all came from an officiating crew that came with a proactively antagonistic attitude and performance.
The coaching staffs of several teams deserve high praise for being the ones to rise above the situation and not let things continue down the path the crew was looking to take it. Kudos to them.
The NSAA places pretty big expectations on coaches, athletes and fans for sportsmanship and appropriate behavior at contests and there has been tremendous growth in that area. Coaches, players, administrators and their schools face pretty strict guidelines about their actions and are held immediately accountable for any lack of professionalism or not representing the standards and values of the NSAA. In its own officials’ manual, the NSAA has as part of its code of ethics for officials that reads, “Officials shall uphold the honor and dignity of the profession in all interaction with student-athletes, coaches, athletic directors, school administrators, colleagues, and the public.”
This officiating crew, on this day, came up well short of that.
What kind of accountability will these officials have? A thorough review of their performance and the incidents is a minimum the organizations that govern the officials should take and – in my opinion – discipline is warranted. This crew gave the great officiating we have in this state a black eye and their conduct and performance was unacceptable. What happens moving forward with this officiating crew will say volumes about how serious the Nebraska High School Officials Association is about matching the expectations the NSAA has for its coaches, athletes and spectators.