Sportsmanship!

Hello boys and girls! Wanted to take a minute to give a shout out to the whole league for how awesome y'all have been so far this season with treating each other and the refs with respect. There have been a few moments of bristling, but on the whole this has been a great first half of the season with a really positive vibe.

As the season goes on, it's totally natural to get a little competitive. Even when it's something as silly as kickball it's still a competition, and winning is fun! Tight plays are going to happen, and here's the tidbit that we all really need to come to accept: Refs are going to get calls wrong sometimes, and that's OK. 

Until such time as we raise registration costs 44327784% to pay for high speed multi angle cameras and instant replay booths, we're going to be relying on the human element to make calls, and mistakes happen, and it's gonna feel like it's not fair when it's not in your favor. I'm not immune to that feeling, I got called out at home last week after sacrificing my body on a sweet corgi-kigurmi-clad slide and immediately got hot with the ref, because

But after a few seconds I calmed right down and shook hands with everyone and hugged it out with the ref, because he called it like he saw it and that's the most you can ask of a ref! A couple hours later I was reffing a game, made an out call at first base on a close play, and I'm ashamed to say the guy I called out handled it way better than me:

So take it easy out there, be respectful to the refs, and buy them a beer after the game to thank them for volunteering their time to improve your kickball experience! Plus you get 25 social points if you take a pic and post it on the Facebook Group with a #reflove hashtag and your team name in the caption!