[Mark Padgett]

As I've stated before, I schedule the refs for our local rec league. This morning, one of my new guys "called in sick" at the last minute so I went ahead and covered his games myself. They were 3/4 grade girls. No, that's not a typo.

The second and third games were fairly routine, but it was the first game that will stick in my memory. The final score was 32 - 0. No, that's not a typo, either. There was a total of 1 foul called in the whole game, no free throws and 37 jump ball calls. Fortunately, it was running clock, since we had more whistles for violations than you could possibly imagine. When you consider we are very lenient on many violations at that level (traveling, carrying, illegal dribble, etc.), it should give you some idea of the flow of the game. Actually, there wasn't any.

All things considered, the game was very successful because all the girls had fun and no one got hurt. Oh yeah - no coach problems either, mostly because they weren't used to seeing me do that level of game and they all know who I am. My partner, who works this level often (she's a HS junior) told me she wants to work with me every week because this is the first time in three years with us that the coaches didn't say a word. This was pretty much true for all three games.

Quite a contrast from the boys V and JV games I worked the previous evening.

I hope everyone stays healthy the rest of the season.