[Mark T. DeNucci, Sr.]

Originally posted by BBallCoach
Or that in twenty years players will look back with fondness over there relationship and the lessons they learned from the officials that worked their game. Oh wait that is not true those would be the coaches they will look back with fond memories.

Many coaches do not know that I became a basketball official because of my H.S. basketball coach. He won 378 games against only 122 losses over 21 years, including 15 league championships (I played on two of them). My coach was very unusual in a very important aspect: He was an OhioHSAA registered basketball official and a charter member of the Trumbull County Basketball Officials Association (I have been a member since 1971) in 1948. In 32 years of officiating he is only one of five basketball coaches that I know were also basketball officials. When asked why he was a basketball official, he always said the you cannot teach the game if you do not know the rules. I graduated from Liberty H.S. in 1969 and I can tell everyone that the guarding/screening requirements are the same today as they were in the 1965-66 season, because every year we would spend an entire practice at the beginning of the season learning how to establish legal guarding positions and setting legal screens per the rule book. As a freshmen in H.S. I know what time and distance meant.

Most people in out community thought that of all of his players I would become a coach, because he was our next door neighbor and I lived basketball from the time I was nine years old, but I decided to study engineering in college and became a basketball official during my second year of college.