Church basketball

Far too often do the Mormon cliche movies hit the nail on the head. Sadly to say, I was a part of this, but gladly to say it was not me who was the perpetrator. An excerpt from my journal:

"Saturday morning we had another game. This time it was against the Viola ward. We have been injury plagued the last couple of weeks. It was the championship game for the stake. The regional standings have already been decided so the game really didn’t mean anything. We had 5 of our team show up, and one of them was Delbert Dillingham, being in his 50s. Anyway, we wanted to have a decent game with them, so we brought in a few other people and decided to forfeit the game but play the game nonetheless. Anyway, let me just preface this by saying this is classic church basketball.

My calves were feeling pretty good through the game – thanks Eric – and we were actually womping on them. They weren’t even playing very good. But right before the half, one of our guys gets fouled pretty bad, and he said, and I quote, “you hit my freakin’ hip!” The Viola guy just blew up! He started to tell the guy that he needed to shut his mouth and stop swearing! I am not sure if “freakin’” is a swear word to them, or if the guy thought that he heard wrongly and our guy actually swore, but he would not stop! I am not kidding in saying that it took about 5 complete minutes to restore order. And even then, order was not restored. He got in a yelling match with the refs, the refs really didn’t do anything about it, and so they just called the game.

Let me just go off on this topic for a bit. First of all, this is church basketball we are talking about. And on top of that, the game had no meaning whatsoever. It was meaningless. I have thought about the event for a while now and have drawn a few conclusions as to what actually happened and what some of the problems were. First of all, I don’t claim to be a person who does not say pseudo-swear words. I do try to refrain from saying “freaking” as I don’t like that, but I have to say that it has slipped out of my mouth at times. I think that any exclamation that is uncontrolled isn’t warranted nor approved. It is hard to go throughout a basketball game and not be angry with yourself and say something that you should not. Swearing, in my opinion, should not be tolerated and shows that person’s lack of intelligence to say something intelligent at that time. But to say that “freakin’” is a swear word and get all in a huff about it – that is going a little too far. Dude, take a chill pill and calm down.

The refs should have had better control on the entire situation. The guy was threatening our player. The moment he went and approached the guy like he did, the refs should have called a technical on him. If he didn’t calm down, they should have thrown him out of the game. There was no reason that he should have been doing what he was doing. They didn’t have that control, and the game got called because of it. Even the other team didn’t want to stop playing. And they couldn’t restrain him either. It was not very pretty.

The guy confronted the current stake sport directors, and the future sport director. He was uncontrollable. I think that in those instances when that person is just so out of control, there are some real issues about that person’s persona. One doesn’t just blow up because he heard a swear word during a church basketball game. Of course you can get angry, and complain to the refs and such, but blow up like that he did. We often joke about getting a T in church basketball will result in an interview with the stake president. In this case, I think an interview with the stake president and a clinical psychologist would be in order."

I would like comments on this. Please feel free to leave any comment you wish on this topic. Church basketball, sometimes, can be really fun. Other times, it is the exact opposite. Again, please leave comments.

eddie