I have never witnessed a volleyball game where getting the coach's attention was easy. I myself have "yelled" score. I use whatever voice is necessary to be heard by the work crew. If they are near where I am sitting, I just get their attention, but if it is really loud in the venue or they are far away, I will yell. Not in a hostile, mad way, but just to get their attention. I do not "yell" score until they've had plenty of time to change the score. Most of the time, if done correctly, the girls are fine with being corrected because they understand what the wrong score would mean to them.

Now I have seen instances where the parents were wrong. My daughter's team was playing in a NQ a few weeks back and the score was wrong or so we thought. We hollered at the work crew who very nicely checked the score, but said it was right. It was the beginning of the game, with a score of 2 to 2 and we thought it should still be 1 to 2. Our coach finally asked too. Our captain was called over by the R1 who told her that she had given a point to the opposing team because one of our players had an illegal headband on and if one of our other players didn't get the ponytail holder off her wrist, the R1 explained she'd give the other team another point.

No one on our team, including the coach, knew that this had occurred. (We knew the R1 had told the player to take the headband off, but not about the point.) If we had not asked about the score, we would not have known about the headband point. (She didn't wear the headband again.) By the way, the R1 did not give a warning about the headband first and this was the beginning of the first game. A huge percentage of players all over the convention center were wearing the same type of headband without losing a point and this same R1 had reffed 2 of our games the day before and the same player wore the same headband all the way through with no comment from anyone.

My point is you can let the work crew know the score is wrong without being mean to them. Most of the time, they are happy to check. And if the parents are wrong, sometimes that can be helpful too.

It was one of the thin plastic headbands. It's funny to know they are not illegal. Should they be wearing them?? I don't think so, but the fact is, lots of girls are wearing them. At the NQ (Far Western), they were everywhere. And like I said, the same ref didn't seem to have a problem with it the day before. But why not just tell her to take it off? I could see giving a point to the other side if the ref had to tell her more than once to remove it or giving a delay of game for the time it took to remove it, but this was ridiculous. Totally threw our girls off for a few minutes.

I agree with EI that people will yell score no matter what anyone says. We should strive to teach everyone to be a bit more patient and not yell in a hostile way. That's the best we can do.