[MCBear]

I was working a women's college tri-match last fall. I was the R1 on the first and last match because I knew who my partner was and he tends to be a little sloppy and inconsistent. We were in the first match and it was in the 4th game. The home team was on my left and the visitor was on my right.

We have gone through 8 loss of rallies so that the home team had their 5th server in right back and the visitor had their 4th server in right back. My partner comes across and tells me that the visitor is out of rotation. I look at where the players are on the court and they are exactly where they are supposed to be from where they started the game. He insists that they are in the wrong positions. I ask to see the line-up sheet and the team is correct. He had also brought the scoresheet over, so I look at it and discover that the scorekeeper had entered the visitor's lineup from GAME ONE when they were on the opposite court and serving first! I couldn't believe that my partner had not been notified by the scorekeeper about being out of rotation when they contacted their first serve.

That wasn't the worst thing to happen though. In the third and final match of the day, both teams split the first four games so we have to play a 5th and deciding game. Visitor wins the coin toss and will serve from my left. First serve, net serve, loss of rally point to home team. Home serves out of bounds, loss of rally point to visitor. Visitor serves and loses rally to home team. Home team serves and net serves, loss of rally to visitor. Visitor serves and my partner blows his whistle indicating a wrong server for the visiting team. I am confused because they are in their third service rotation and everything looks correct to me. Come to find out, when he checked the line-ups on the court at the beginning of the game, the visitor was in the wrong order to start - neither he nor the scorekeeper caught that they were out of rotation. I was ready to kill them both!!!! So, we had to put them in the correct order (they had to rotate one position so that they were where they were actually supposed to be), award a loss of rally to the home team and go one from there.

The reason I was ready to kill both my partner and the scorekeeper is that it should never gotten into the third rotation before someone noticed that it was a wrong server. Plus, my partner should NEVER have let them serve out of rotation in the first place. That is the whole purpose of having the R2 (college, Umpire in NFHS) check the line-ups before the start of each game - so that the players start in the correct position on the court.

Like you, rev, I have worked with partners who are only there to get the check. In that case, I take over and will not let the klutz undermine the integrity of the game. My bottom line is always that we get the call right. It is one thing when my partner doesn't know how to call ball-handling, but it is a whole different kettle of fish when he doesn't know the rules of the game and is making incorrect calls based on that. The players deserve better than that.

Good luck getting yourself re-established in your new area. I had to go through that when I moved out here to California from Ohio in 1993.