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Years ago, the local high school in my town was a 5A (largest classification in Texas) school that played in a district with schools we didn't work and were closer to a metro area. We worked the local school's non-district games, but not their district, as their district foes insisted on using the metro chapter's officials. That was fine, and we still did the subvarsity games. One night, I was out there on a JV doubleheader and one of the varsity officials didn't show. Turned out that he went to another school 25 miles away that happened to start with the same letter, but that was it. OK, mistakes like that happen, but instead of coming to the game late, he went home. If he worked in my current chapter, he'd be out for a while, if not forever.
Last year, I was late for the first time in my CAREER to a game. I sat in a parking lot style traffic for almost 35 minutes and there was no way around it. I still blame myself for not anticipating something that might go wrong. We file late and no-show game reports, but no one is going to get killed for being late once in a blue moon.
The only flip side of this is that I've heard coaches ***** and moan about late arrivals, yet concede that they've been late to games as a team before. Its like their excuse of not being able to get a bus is justified, but any officials' isn't.
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