[BillyMac]

At the beginning of my officiating career, in the early eighties, contact lenses were relatively new, and expensive, and were seldom used by basketball players. Back then, most contact lenses were the hard variety, and often fell out, especially during the contact in a basketball game. Back then most players with eyesight problems either wore glasses with straps, or prescription goggles. I don't think that it was in the mechanics manual, but we were taught to ask the captains, during our pregame meeting, who on their team was wearing contact lenses, and note it in the scorebook. If I recall, the reason was to prevent the coach from abusing the rules by having a player lie about losing a contact lens to gain an extra time out, for strategy, or just to get his, or her, players a little rest. Over the years contact lenses have become better, cheaper, and are being used more and more by athletes, so sometime, along the way, we have just stopped asking. Nobody ever told us to stop asking. We just did. I don't know of anyone our our local board of about 280 officials who asks anymore.