One of the "grayest areas" in ITA officiating is the area of taunting. Its kind of like pornography--you have a hard time defining it but you know it when you see it...
Giving a code violation for taunting usually depends entirely on the discretion of the official. Some give a lot of leeway and some give none--and this is what drives collegiate coaches crazy. There is no doubt that taunting should not be tolerated but where do we draw the line in codeable taunting and cheering after winning a point.
Here are some of the players' excuses:
* I'm only pumping my fist to motivate myself.
* I'm pumping my first toward Heaven to get God to help me.
* I'm only pumping my fist to get my teammates involved. (Of course this is no problem at some of our more elite programs...)
* That player taunted me when he/she gave me the "evil eye."
* That other player started it. (Welcome to a junior high playground.)
* That player's coach teaches them to taunt and see how much they can get away with.
Seems like one of the best ways to alleviate the problem is to tell the player (just once) to stop pumping his/her fist toward the other player and if they do it again--code them.
What are your thoughts???
2 comments:
Pump your fist till your blue in the face but the first time you do it at your opponent and prolong it with a stare, then warning or straight to code should be easy.
What about pumping fist at the opposing crowd to incite them?
OMG's - are we at the point where we are BABYSITTERS...
I say bring a BIG FLASH CARD and pull it out of your bag and FLASH the dork A&M guy that sits on court one with NOTHING better to do than FLASH his card and yell ACE! As soon as he got his first card out - i'd run over to the bag and pull out my "BIG DORK" flash card and put it in his face.
Talk about taunting...
Seems like we stop them way too soon - I love the crowd and the player passion... Instead - we are to stop them from acting as stupid as their parents and friends watching them...
Remember, you have plenty of coaches and player/officials that scream THIS IS COLLEGE TENNIS... I say, what in the heck does it hurt to have a kid raise his/her fist in the face of another as long as they do not touch each other... In Belarus when you raise your shirt and show your bellyButton to someone it is a compliment - I would laugh but, not code a kid for doing that to his/HER opponent - why in the world would you code passion!?
If your going to code a kid for reacting with passion - then you need to code the crowd for reacting as passionate idiots.
Love BACO
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