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I'm always as hesitant as possible to criticize an official from any sport, especially at the lower levels.   My daughter had played rec volleyball here for 5 years and we've always had pretty good officials. I've disagreed with them on judgement calls, but also realize that's officiating and they are there to make those judgement calls. I'll even go as far to say these parks & rec are better than the middle school level officials I've seen. In both I've seen blatant rules mis-applications.   Now my son (8 y/o) has started playing basketball. And this is his first attempt at any sport. He actually has had zero interest in any sport but came home with the basketball sign up form and was excited and wanted to play so we signed him up. - Quick sidebar to give you better understanding on my son he has Autism that gives him exceptional intelligence, but he rates a zero on social awareness. Think Dr. Sheldon Cooper from Big Bang Theory. When I told him we'd sign him up I went to buy him a basket ball to teach him the basics - He didn't even know how to dribble then and he went to the library and checked out half a dozen books on basketball and "researched" basketball. Now he can tell me everything I ever wanted to know about basketball, but still is far behind other 8 y/o boys in ability.    Saturday was his teams 5th game. They were undefeated going in. We had the first game of the morning and arrived early. When I saw our refs for the game I litter ally said "Oh my look at this guy" to my wife. He was very heavy set, had a scruffy beard which hadn't been trimmed in months, was wearing gray sweatpants, and overall just looked sloppy.    I had judged this guy and it was still 10 minutes until game time.    My father-in-law also made a comment about the guy "We're in for it with this guy as one of our refs."    I should say we use 2 refs and the other was 17 ish y/o and looked average along with most of the other refs.   The game started and for the first half our team was shooting at the goal we were sitting behind. The sloppy looking ref was calling the goal we were sitting under. Now you couldn't fill a postage stamp with what I know about basketball officials mechanics, but I'm 99% certain that standing virtually under the goal on your side is not in any mechanics book. I noticed quickly he seemed to be calling a lot of fouls. He was calling them both ways, bit a bit of OOO if you ask me especially at the 8 y/o level. He also made some calls which were absolutely ridiculous.    The most ridiculous call came with 18 seconds left in the game and we were up by 1. The other team took a shot one of their players got the rebound and fell to his butt. One of our kids grabbed the ball too. Then came the whistle. I initially thought it was going to be a jump ball and I was happy because we had the arrow. Well my friend called shooting foul awarding 2 shots to the other team. That was the closest I've ever come to becoming unglued at another official.  How could you say he was fouled taking a shot when he is on his butt and another player also had the ball???? Our coach held it together well and went to the scorers table to protest, but to no avail.    To the other kids credit he made both of his foul shots and we couldn't even get a last second shot off.    Now coming back to the point I was trying to make... Would I have noticed how bad this guy was had he looked the part? I can't even remember ever even noticing the refs before the game unless it was this one guy who worked with my son at summer camp one year. Had this guy "looked the part" would I have noticed or thought he was overly officious? Would I have been more forgiving at some of his earlier calls? Would I have nearly come unglued at the final call?    I doubt it. Of all the officials they use I can now recognize 3. The one who was a counselor at summer camp, one guy who is nearly 7 ft tall (Hard not to notice) and this guy. But the big difference was appearance. I targeted him nearly immediately as a "Smitty" because of the way he looked and it didn't take long for him to prove me right.    As an official of any sport no matter how hard you try you will not get all of your calls right, that comes with the territory. You will not win all the battles with coaches or spectators. Once again that comes when you don the uniform. But win the battles you can win, especially the easy ones like looking the part.