My personal experiences around aau and the coaches have not been positive (I know that it doesn’t mean they are all dirty, or bad). I do think especially at higher levels of AAU it can get pretty bad.
If my kids want to play I’ll support them, help them, do what I can to lead them through life.
It occurs to me after reading your above post not enough is made about the job of peacemaker that a ref needs to play, sometimes a fight will happen and there might not be anything that could’ve been done. A lot of the time though the ref needs to keep things from escalating long before a fight does happen.
I was in a game in middle school, where a parent got pissed off about a call and was pretty determined he wanted to fight and I don’t think the ref could’ve done much to de-escalate it, but a lot of the time a good ref is stern with the calls and boundaries but also let’s players know early what is and isn’t allowed.
