Yes, I know how you feel. I've blown the whistle at the wrong time, made the wrong call. We will try to make it up during the game but we don't always. Your comments about us officials showing up calling the game, then going home is all wrong. Yes, we have jobs outside of officiating, but you have school. We are at the game an hour early, we talk about every conceivible possibility and how we are going to handle it. We read the rule books, case books, mechanics books more than you care to imagine. We call rec games, YMCA games, we attend camps, and we call anything we get our hands on and we watch video tape too. Why? So we can call your game just a little bit better. Are we perfect? No. We blow our whistle too fast to make a phantom travel call. We call block when we should have called charge. We call a hack when the defender was straight up.
Are there bad refs? yes. Just like there are bad teachers, lawyers, doctors, engineers, journalist, basketball players and whatever line of work you wish to pursue. We try to weed them out before they call a varsity game, but it doesn't always happen. You probably won't find too many of them on this board. After all, you don't hang out on this board if you didn't have the desire to learn and improve.
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