By Ferd Lewis
Advertiser Staff Columnist

Finally, somebody in authority has stood up and said what should have been proclaimed loud and clear a long time ago: It is wrong to abuse those who officiate sports events and people who do will pay a stiff price.

When the Hawai'i High School Athletic Association meted out some of the strongest sanctions in its history — putting Baldwin High's boys soccer team on probation for a year, suspending a player for good, and banning his coach for five years after a malicious attack on a referee during the state tournament — it acknowledged it was also sending a message.

"The board wants to put an end to this type of behavior," said Keith Amemiya, HHSAA executive secretary, of the unanimous vote by the principals of the five leagues.

It is a message that has been a long time in coming. For too long those who officiate sports on a lot of levels, from the youth leagues to the pros, have been left hanging, forced to fend for themselves against a rising tide of cowardly harassment and violence.

Regrettably, too many administrators and coaches have either turned a blind eye or passed the buck when it comes to drawing a line and punishing those who cross it. It has too often been left to the victims to file police reports if they wanted any hope of justice.

While more than a dozen states already have laws specifically targeting those who abuse referees, here in Hawai'i the legislature has, for more than a decade, failed to pass bills that attempted to give added teeth to protecting those who officiate sporting events.

The National Association of Sports Officials, which monitors such incidents, says the frequency with which "these reports now occur is even more disturbing." Small wonder, the NASO says, that the most frequently cited reason for people who leave officiating is the abuse they are subjected to.

You have only to flip on a TV set to see the targets that officials have become. It isn't just hot-headed superstars and miscreants run amok who have put officials under siege. Lately it has also been elder statesmen who should know better — Jerry Sloan shoving a ref and Joe Paterno chasing down and grabbing an official.

And, that's just the on-the-field abuse. Increasingly they are being hit with items thrown from the stands — one official working the Castle-Saint Louis state football playoff game was said to have been conked with a Spam musubi in a post-game hail of debris — or confronted in parking lots.

Locally, sportsmanship has deteriorated to the point where some leagues now mandate that certain events must take place in stadiums where there are fences to separate spectators from the playing field.

Maybe, if more groups stand up like the HHSAA, the notion will take hold that messing with officials is a losing proposition.