Another Milestone achieved

Not one that I wanted to ever say I reached, but it was done nonetheless. It was the sending off of a parent. Here is the story:

Halfway through the second half with the blue team up 4-1 and pressing hard to get even more a parent from the team winning all of a sudden starts going ballistic on me, yelling at the top of his lungs that there was a foul on the play. The play in question was a pass that one kid from the blue team chipped over to another who tried to volley and missed the ball, with no one from the other team even within a yard of him.

I walked over, had a lengthy conversation with him that ended with me saying "Would you rather watch the rest of your son's match here on the sideline or in the parking lot?" He said "Try me." I sent him on his way, and all the while he was walking off, he said fairly vulgar things. And there were threats of legal action if his son was injured. I documented it of course, spoke with the assignor who was not there and there was a parent who came over and said that he had seen the three matches and that I had done a good job, that there weren't enough refs with the guts to send off parents when they went ballistic.

The other two games I will write about later if I have the time, but there was nothing spectacular about them compared to this one. I did do a U11 Boys D1 match, and boy, they were a pleasure to watch compared to the D5 game that this incident originated from. The ball control, the dribbling, the crisp passing into space not at the person. I enjoyed it. And the bonehead parent did not come to mind at all until I was done with my three matches.

Next weekend is a tournament, and I have 6 matches total (2 Saturday and 4 Sunday). But hopefully the parents will not be as uptight...