Recently, the commissioner of California Interscholastic Federation Southern Selection (CIF-SS), Rob Wigod, released a statement on the CIF’s official website explaining the amount of ejections that took place in the Southern Section of high schools sports in the 2018-19 season. This strange statistic included the amount of ejections that occurred in each sport including: Baseball- 170, Basketball- 194, Football- 324, and Water Polo- 216. If it seems like these sports have had a lot of ejections, nothing comes close to the amount of red cards handed out in soccer with a towering 866 ejections in the 18-19 season.

Every student athlete that was ejected faced an automatic disqualification from the following game, and as ejections begin tallying up, the punishments get worse and worse. With 3 total ejections in a year, an individual player will be suspended from all contests for a whole year, and then must go through the CIF Eligibility Committee to get reinstated, which can put a complete end to a student-athlete’s career.

In a statement from Robert Wigod titled “It Is A Numbers Game”, he gave his take on this situation arguing, “Over the years, people seem to just accept that situation as particular to that sport. I say no.” He claims that these ejections can decrease over time with better officiating and proper punishments placed on athletes to keep the referees from ejecting them from the game entirely.

However, according to Wigod, there has been very little improvement over the last few years. He explains that since 2015, the numbers of ejections are still staggering and have never really decreased based on the data given.

In a brief interview with Coach Rodrigo Belloso, who is a part-time basketball referee and former coach of the women’s basketball team at Lugo, he proposed, “It’s [ejections] just based on if a player is going over the line, and it’s obvious when you see in reality.” He also mentions the way high school athletes take actions from professional players and how they perceive the way relationships between players and refs should be.

The unsportsmanlike conduct from high school athletes that causes them to get ejected from games showcases how much development Commissioner Robert Wigod needs to endure in order to make a tangible improvement. As of now, the commissioner claims that he is aiming for less and less ejections to occur each year.