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Originally Posted by LDUB
I hate it when the table and team benches are located opposite side instead of table side  |
Many years ago, our local board teamed up with the Doc Hurley Scholarship Classic, a mid-season tournament, whose goal is to raise scholarship money for local area high school students. We provide the officials at no cost to the Classic. Every year, a few games are scheduled at the Hartford Civic Center, now the Hartford XL Center, our "big time" Connecticut sports arena, former home to the Hartford Whalers, now the Carolina Hurricanes, former home to a few Boston Celtics "home away from home" games, and present home to many University of Connecticut mens and womens games. In other words, it's a big deal for a high school official to be assigned a game at the Center.
http://www.docscholar.org/
One year, one of our best, veteran officials was assigned a Civic Center game. Many of his colleagues on our board were in attendance at the game. The first time he calls a foul he reports it to the press table, on the opposite side of the floor from the scorer's table. This happened about twenty years ago, he has been retired from active officiating for many years, and we still remind him of his blunder as often as we can.
Working a game in such a facility, when we're used to working in smaller gyms, can be a little intimidating. Several years ago, the Civic Center hosted a game involving high school All Americans, some who would be attending UCONN. My daughter's AAU team was asked to play an intrasquad scrimmage during halftime to entertain the crowd. I was asked to officiate the game, and recruited one of my colleagues to help me. Even though many of the sold out crowd were using the restrooms or getting refreshments, the noise was incredibly loud, which didn't surprise me. What did surprise me was the lighting, very bright, which I found to be more intimidating than the crowd.