Monday August 30th – Miami of OH 4 (2) @ UC Davis 2 (1) – with Mike Wagner

Coming from an 8:0 defeat of University of the Pacific on Saturday Miami were in good form. UC Davis were not expected to acquit themselves very well but they did make a great game of it.

The game was pretty much incident free. 7 green cards and 1 yellow for Miami and none for Davis, 10 Penalty corners for Miami and none for Davis, tell their own story of intensity.

That intensity spread to the benches and some unhelpful commentary was leveled at the umpiring team. It is always difficult deciding what to do with this. If you engage, you end up debating, it can escalate and then there are cards. It puts the coach off their game and the umpire off theirs. You can ignore it and then it seems like you are standoffish and uncaring. You can gesture to keep things quiet but you end up missing what is going on on the field. It is quite a dilemma.

In the end I chose to ignore the comments and they eventually died down.

At the end of the game I am sure they were talking about the missed opportunities, on both sides, and not about the umpiring.