Chokeholds, death threats and bodyslams: The crisis facing AAU referees and travel umpires

No one likes you. You know it from the minute you get out of your car and walk onto the field or into the fieldhouse.

Sure, there are the obligatory pregame handshakes and smiles, but you know what you’re in for. Both coaches feel like you’re against them. The players think you’re just getting in their way. The fans? Don’t think about them too much. At best, you’ll shudder. At worst, you might just go back to your car and drive home.

It’s all a bit ironic. The goal is to not be noticed. In a perfect world,  you show up, call your game, leave and collect your paycheck.

The reality for travel baseball umpires and AAU basketball referees is vastly different. The arbiters, who are supposed to be invisible, keep finding the spotlight. And it’s creating a crisis.

Officials for high school events have policies and procedures that protect them. Generally speaking, schools have their backs. If there is an incident between an official and a fan, player, or coach, action is taken. There’s an ejection. A report is written up. There might be chaos, but it’s controlled.

But the sharks in the travel sports scene, a growing industry worth billions of dollars, smell blood in the water. They’re coming for you, and there’s nothing you can do about it.

“People get their expectations from TV, with the box on the screen,” said Blake Hibler, the president of Bullpen Tournaments who oversees thousands of baseball and softball games at Grand Park in Westfield annually. “Video has become so easy. Everyone has a replay in their pocket. They can slow it down and have multiple angles. Almost every play has video. The umpires are always wrong.”

And when they get a call wrong?

“A couple years ago, I got choked out by a parent after a game,” said Brett Maudlin, a 22-year-old umpire from northwest Indiana. “My life has been threatened by a parent. A couple weeks ago, I had to walk off the field because the fans and the coaches got so bad that I wasn't gonna do it anymore. I just walked off the field and made the team forfeit.”

Play ball.

Punches and a bodyslam in Westfield

Every so often, an incident goes viral. Such was the case last year at the Pacers Athletic Center in Westfield.

Late in the first quarter of a girls travel basketball game between ​​Baylor Basketball and Indiana Elite, the Baylor coach began arguing with a referee over a call. Another referee gave the coach a technical foul, and the coach began to walk away. As the referee who was initially involved in the argument explained the incident to the scorer’s table, a fan walked onto the court and was filming. The referee swiped the phone out of the fan’s hand and punched him. A Baylor fan came after the referee and began punching him, and the referee was eventually flipped and landed on the court.

The incident quickly went viral on social media. At the time, the Pacers Athletic Center told IndyStar it was “an unfortunate incident.” The team involved was ejected from the event, as was the referee involved. IndyStar reached out to the referee for this story, but he did not respond to an interview request.

Justin Bates, director of scheduling at the Pacers Athletic Center, said there were several problems that led to the incident boiling over.

“When you put the same program on the court three games in a row with the same official, by the end of the third game, they don’t like the officials,” he said. “They were taunting him, they were calling him racist, they were calling him all kinds of things. They were accusing him of cheating.”

Bates said the tournament director should have recognized that a problem was brewing, and moved the referee to another court. Instead, things reached a breaking point. When the referee swiped the phone and punched the fan, there was no stopping what transpired.

“You can't do that as an official. You cannot take the bait,” Bates said. “Every game I've refereed, someone's called me a cheater or a bum or a lousy ref. You hear every word under the sun, but you cannot react to the crowd.”

Bates said the referee has not worked in the building since the incident. The Pacers Athletic Center told IndyStar that the event operator hires referees and handles team registrations, not the venue.

“There were a lot of things that went wrong and made it a bad situation for everybody,” Bates said.

Matt Arnold, the director of USA Youth Hoops who assigns referees for games at the Pacers Athletic Center, told IndyStar he’d never had any issues with that particular referee, calling him a “really good dude.” Arnold, who was not at the Pacers Athletic Center when the incident occurred, said it “tore (the referee) up. I mean, he was sick.”

“I was always taught to walk away from conflict, but these guys are human as well,” Arnold said. “If you don't have the backing of the facility and the assigner that hires the officials, these guys feel like they're on an island. It gets ugly.”

The incident was a “black eye” for the venue, Arnold said. Incidents like it are causing referees to walk away — and creating an environment for the problem to only get worse.

“In the last couple of years, I've lost a lot of really good officials,” he said. “What they see on the outside is making a lot of guys second-guess whether they want to keep officiating in the summer.”

But lose enough umpires and referees, and you start losing games. The Charlie Hughes Shootout, an annual summer tournament in Indianapolis that featured more than 100 high school teams in 2021, had some games during this year’s event covered by just one official — despite numerous pleas for referees to participate. If that trend continues, the number of teams allowed to participate could dwindle.

“That's some of the best basketball in the state,” Arnold said. “When I was growing up with events like that, we would beg to get assigned to those. Now, assigners are having to do the begging just to get guys to work.”

So much happens that doesn’t go viral

So much happens that you don’t see. So much is said that fans don’t think is heard.

They’re wrong.

“A majority of them are cowards,” said Antoine Ross, who’s been an umpire for 12 years with Bullpen. “They're not gonna say it to your face too many times. They think you don't hear it, but we hear everything.”

Ross hears things like this: A spectator in his 60s who made a comment within Ross’ earshot, saying, “What does he know about baseball? He's black.’”

After a game, a parent walked up to Ross and threatened him.

“He was saying, ‘I’ll do this to you. I'll do that. I’ll meet you in the parking lot,’” Ross recalled. “He had some choice words that he was using — a couple N words, a couple B words.

“They’ve got to understand I'm a grown man. You don't threaten me. You're not gonna walk all over me. Your kids are right there. Anytime a kid has apologized for his parents actions, it’s gone too far.”

Maudlin is unique, at least among umpires — he’s young. He’s been umpiring for six years, and he’s only 22. A concussion meant his playing days were over, but his love for the game still burned inside. He took up umpiring.

Was he prepared for what he’d experience?

“I had no idea going in,” he said.

Three years ago during a game, he ejected both coaches. After the game, a parent approached Maudlin.

“He thought he’d take it in his own hands to tell me how bad I was,” Maudlin said. “I walked away. He chased me and started to put his hands around my throat.”

Other umpires intervened, picking the parent up and pulling him away. The police were called.

Another time, he and another umpire were followed to their cars by fans. Maudlin was going to a hotel. His partner was going home.

“It's so frightening,” he said. “For me it wasn't as bad because I wasn't going to my permanent residence. But for him, he's like, ‘These people could follow me and come back another night and do something to my house or wife or kid.”

What’s causing the problem?

Travel baseball and basketball are experiencing a growing number of incidents involving officials, and the root causes are similar.

For one, the number of games every summer is astronomical. The more games there are, the higher the potential for problems. Hibler has been the director of Bullpen Tournaments since April 2013. In the past decade, more than 12,000 games have been played at Grand Park — or more than 1,000 games crammed into a six-month period. Arnold said he assigns up to 500 games in a single weekend. That amounts to thousands of AAU basketball games every summer.

The more games there are, the more officials are needed. Sometimes, a limited pool of officials is spread over a number of events across the state — on any given weekend, there might be AAU tournaments at Grand Park and the Indiana Convention Center.

If fewer officials are available, the ones who work get stretched thin. That leads to exhaustion and missed calls.

“If there comes a point where you're mentally tired and physically tired, you're not going to finish the game at the best of your ability,” said Chris Shields, who assigns referees for organizations such as Prep Hoops, USJN Basketball and the IHSAA. “They’re doing eight to 10 games per day because they're trying to make money. They’re tired and not making the correct calls. The physical part of it takes a toll.”

Put another way: Stephen Feistel has umpired travel baseball games in Evansville for five years; in early July, he called 14 games in a three-day period from Friday to Sunday.

“I'm probably not at my best on Sunday,” he said. “So what happens when we're all heat exhausted and worn out? Attitudes get kind of chippy.”

Officials aren’t the only ones being stretched past their capacity. Tournament directors are often the last line of defense.

Bullpen Tournaments has a part-time staff of 200 people, and nearly 40 on site when events are happening. Hibler said that if there is a situation where a fan or coach is being problematic, the staff tries to “have a presence around the field so they feel like they’re being watched.” Grand Park has 26 fields on its campus.

However, other facilities might not have enough staff to have a noticeable presence at all games. Feistel says he knows of an umpire -- not Maudlin -- who was followed to their car and threatened by a fan. He said the tournament director wasn’t made aware of the situation, and only found out about it when the incident was mentioned on social media.

“When given the opportunity, directors typically handle that correctly,” he said. “But more times than not, you're left out on your own, because the director is trying to handle 10, 12, 14 fields. You're kind of on your own island to defend yourself, which is a lonely spot to be with only your partner and 100 other people who aren't associated with you at all.”

Stephen Gordon, who lives in South Bend and has been umpiring for 12 years, says tournament directors are the only people adequately equipped to handle poor behavior.

“I usually try to ignore what's going on outside the fence. If I need to, I will bring the tournament director over and have them deal with it,” he said. “We can't control the parents. That's up to the tournament director to deal with what the parents are doing.”

‘That’s their cash cow’

Money talks, and it’s wreaking havoc.

The travel sports scene is a booming industry. It can cost thousands of dollars for a parent to have their son or daughter play on a travel sports team. It can cost thousands for a team to enter a tournament. Some say that expense means coaches and fans think they have a free pass.

“These people pay a lot of money (to play in tournaments) and they feel that that gives them the right to yell and scream at officials,” Bates said. “There's no accountability for these parents at these events. The people running the tournaments don't want to kick them out, because that's their cash cow. These tournament directors are making money at these tournaments. If they have officials throwing fans out, then these people are not going to pay and your tournament gets a bad reputation.”

If coaches get thrown out of games, or if their fans get thrown out, they might not come back next year.

“In order to keep teams playing you’ve got to appease these teams,” said Tony Saviano, who’s been umpiring for 25 years. “There's sort of a fine line we've got to walk.”

Heath Hayes, president of the Wabash Valley Officials Administration, said coaches consistently threaten tournament directors after they’ve been ejected.

“‘If you don’t let me back in, I’m not bringing my team back,’” they say.

On the flip side, officials say they are chronically underpaid — and it’s causing some to walk away.

The IHSAA told IndyStar that its officials are paid between $60-$120 for regular-season games, and up to $110 for a state championship game. Most AAU basketball referees and travel baseball referees make less than $40 per game. When you add in the cost of gas money and food, the profit is minimal unless an official is covering numerous games in a day or weekend.

Whether you’ve been an official for 50 years or five minutes, everyone makes the same at each event (the magnitude and prestige of the event can dictate how much officials make, but most officials IndyStar spoke with said they generally top out at $40 per game).

“If you're a guy that's been working for 20 years and you're looking across the way at the guy that's worked for 20 minutes, some of these guys are going, ‘I don't know if I like this,’” Arnold said.

Hibler said Bullpen pays its umpires $60 per game to umpire at the youth level and $70 per game to umpire at the high school level. The rates used to be $45 and $55, respectively. He said, “I think that number will continue to increase.”

Shields, who handled assigning officials for the Charlie Hughes Shootout this year, said the referee shortage will cause the tournament to pay more per game moving forward.

More money for officials means less profit for directors, venues and organizations.

“Last weekend, I assigned close to 500 games,” Arnold said. “If everybody gets a $5 raise, you're talking $6,000-$7,000 right out of the gate. It’s not as easy as it sounds. That adds up really fast.”

What’s the solution? Depends on who you ask.

Different venues have different ways of policing fan behavior. Hibler says that in the thousands of games at Grand Park during his tenure as director, “less than 1%” have a violence issue. He said that if a coach is involved in a violent situation, they are banned — though he said it’s harder to track spectators. If a coach is ejected from a game, some venues require them to sit out the next game. Others require not just the coach to sit out a game, but for a player on the team to sit out a game as well. Hibler says Bullpen doesn’t require an ejected coach to sit out the next game “unless their behavior is extraordinarily bad.”

Maudlin said a city league in Northwest Indiana has a three-strike policy: One issue from a fan prompts a one-game ban. Another issue prompts a season-long ban. A third issue prompts a lifetime ban.

How behavior is managed varies. Many venues have brought in security. Some use uniformed law enforcement officers. Opinions vary on how effective these methods are at stopping incidents from happening or escalating.

“I don't know that helps, to be honest with you,” Arnold said. “I've seen some crazy stuff happen with an officer standing right beside these people. Five years ago, if there was an officer at an event, nobody said a word. Now, I don't even think it fazes people.”

Feistel said “maybe it helps” if there is security or an officer at a field. But it can only do so much.

“Unfortunately, these parks are so massive that even one officer at a field doesn't stand a chance if a situation gets out of control really quickly,” he said.

Others say it makes all the difference in the world.

“I asked my organizations to have security — police — on staff,” Shields said. “It helps with a lot of situations. When you have police presence in the building, it does help a lot of situations.”

IndyStar spoke with more than a dozen referees and umpires for this story. Nearly all of them wish more was done to police fan behavior at events. Some propose more drastic ideas, because they’re just fed up with it.

“If you're going to be disrespectful toward the umpires or make threats, you need to not only be removed for that game, you need to be removed for the whole season,” Ross said. “You shouldn't be allowed to attend your child’s games anymore. One umpire represents every umpire. If you're gonna be disrespectful to one, we don't want you to come back and watch any game.”

For the love of the game

Plenty have given up. Hayes doesn’t do travel games anymore, because “that’s where the stupid happens.”

“I don’t do youth stuff,” he said. “It’s not worth it.”

Some just officiate IHSAA games. Data from the organization shows that while the number of football, basketball and baseball officials has decreased by 25% between the 2015-2016 and 2021-2022 seasons, numbers are not in a rapid decline.

Others have been scared off. Saviano was training a young umpire who he said was “very good.” He didn’t last long.

“It took one coach to go off on him for him to say, ‘I don't want to do this anymore,’” he said.

Mike Albert, who lives in Westville, is 64 and still going strong. His son was a catcher in high school. He occasionally brought up the idea of umpiring to his son.

“I said, ‘Little league games are good money for the summertime,’” Albert said. “He was adamant that he didn't want anything to do with it. A lot of kids feel that way.”

Some of the impact might be generational.

“These kids say, ‘Nah, I don’t get paid enough for this’ or ‘I saw how my dad treated referees. There’s no way I’m doing that,’” Hayes said.

Yet there are those who remain. Plenty have thought about walking away, because the abuse is so constant and the monetary reward so little. But something keeps them coming back.

“Even though I hate getting yelled at, I love umpiring,” Gordon said. “When I do a good job and we're having a good game, you can see it on the kids’ faces and they're having fun. That's what I'm all about — making sure that the kids are having a good time.”

If they walk away, who will be left?

“I have thought about that a couple of times,” Ross said. “But the embrace that kids give you when they see you makes it worth it.”

This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Travel ball officials: The crisis facing AAU referees, umpires