Avoid Pigeon Forge Tourneys

[JustDoIT]

AAU teams should be carefull about the Pigeon Forge Tourneys as they had a great deal of organization problems this past weekend. All games at all gyms ran about 1 hour or father behind.

 

Players were playing out of age groups all over the place with no worry about getting caught.

 

Officiating was awful. Not just merely bad as is typical but awful. We saw one game with a team loose a large lead because they had at least 3 players foul out maybe more before the end of 3rd quarter. To be honest the team that lost all the players had the game taken from them (when we came in they had a big lead)the players that fouled out were all larger players and it seemed like they played with all 1s and 2s until they were down to 4 players and which point the blue team stopped the game. It then got ugly but not physical with the refs, the coach, and apparently some woman involved with the tourney I'm guessing.

 

Latter at another gym a coach who had not had any trouble with the officials was given a double T, and asked to leave the gym he did not and his team forfeited a game that was tied at 53 with 2 minutes left. Funny the tourney director jumped on the officials for enforcing the rules that states you have to exit the gym if you recieve 2 Ts. The director yelled that they would never officiate again because of this. The officials did not start the game back as the coach stayed.

 

2 different gyms with one director yelling at a coach to exit the gym because of bad officiating, and at the other the director yelling at the refs because they were following the rules.

 

It unfortunate this had been a well run tourney in the past! Maybe if people don't flock to it because of its location they will get the organization back together and get better officials and gym managers instead of money collectors.