And Here Is A Referee Getting Jumped By A Youth Hockey Team After He Smacked One Of The Kids Upside The Head

Well, THAT escalated quickly. Hey, I'll be the first one to tell you that being a referee is a thankless job. No, not because I have been one, but because I have verbally abused enough of them to know that it's not something I would want to do, no matter how desperate I was for some excess cash. I think the thing that sucks about this is I started off wanting to take the ref's side. You just know that little shithead deserved to get smacked. You know he probably told that official he was going to fuck his mother, kill his father, take his sister out to a nice steak dinner, and never call her again. There's not a doubt in mind. Alas, that's the rub of calling youth hockey games. Hell, that's the rub of calling any hockey game. You ARE going to get berated, but if you even so much as talk back to a player in an aggressive tone then you make that player the victim. Yeah, this kid is wrong for engaging an official in a physical manner, even if it was in relatively harmless way, but that doesn't give him the right to smack the kid into next Wednesday. Shit, if this is how it worked I wouldn't even have been a hockey player growing up. My sport of choice would have been ref fighting while wearing hockey equipment. That doesn't make this kid right, nor does it make the gaggle of barely pubescent bastards that jumped him right, but it definitely makes them look right in the eyes of the casual observer, and that's really all that matters. I actually feel bad for this guy, because sometimes you just got to teach a kid a lesson, but doing so while wearing stripes and orange arm bands is not the appropriate moment to do it. If anything, he is a victim of poor timing...as well as the victim of a group of kids that have a bunch of brand new hormones coursing through their veins that they have no idea what to do with. 

Seriously, look at these little fuckers. It was like flies on shit. I thought I was impressed with that referee's hard right, until I saw the reaction time of these kids. Maybe I'm just too used to watching drunk fights where it takes people 5 minutes to figure out which was is up. All in all? One of the more solid youth hockey fights I have ever witnessed.

Not a good month for referees. Might be time to demand a raise guys...