By Dave Zednik, IHOA Vice President
QUESTION: Team A’s Head Coach is assessed a bench minor penalty for Abuse of Officials. While that penalty is still being served, the Assistant Coach now starts verbally abusing the Referee. What penalty should the Referee assess?
ANSWER: Game Misconduct Penalty. Rule Reference 601(e.1). Provided the abuse is a continuation of the original action causing the bench minor penalty to be assessed, the game misconduct shall be assessed even though it is a different Team Official. This helps avoid the situation where two or more Team Officials work together to continue their inappropriate behavior without consequence greater than a bench minor penalty. This is only applied when the abuse is a continuation of the original penalty. If the second Team Official engages in improper conduct several minutes later in response to a different situation, then the Referee must assess another bench minor penalty to start the penalty progression over.