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All of our conferences assign by crews where I live. In WI we work 2-official crews and I could literally choose to work every game with the same official all season long. But we all have some personal conflicts throughout the year and openings come up, so in the end I'll probably work with 5 or 6 people before the season is over.
I do work boys varsity games in Illinois for 2 conferences and those games are assigned to crews. One of the crews that I work on for one of those conferences consists of 3 officials that drive down from WI to work. So I have a shirt with a patch for those games and we drive down in one car -- sometimes quite a shorter distance than we drive for games in our "own" state. But I love the different style of basketball and I love working 3-official mechanics.
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Frankly, the coaches and the ADs wield a lot of power where I am. That works to my advantage most of the time as I've received more positive feedback from coaches and ADs than anything else. But it has also caused some interesting things to happen.
Last season I was working a varsity boys game WAY out in the sticks. At least 90-100 miles from home. Visiting assistant coach comes out on the floor to complain about a non-call during a live ball and my partner (rightly) whacks him.
As I'm calmly and professionally seating the head coach he makes a comment about how we just lost a school. I was stunned at the blatant nature of the comment, so much so that I neglected to call the flagrant technical he deserved for it.
Some coaches aren't very smart in some regards, though. He may control HIS home schedule, but most teams do play road games and I notice he's on my schedule twice in February. It won't affect anything, but my smile will be a bit bigger than usual when we greet him before the game.
[Edited by Rich Fronheiser on Jan 8th, 2004 at 11:51 PM]
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