[Mark Padgett]

My partner at last night's game called a foul on a girl for "squatting" on another girl. That's how he reported it - "Green, five, she was squatting on the girl with the ball". Unfortunately, he gave no signal. Damn, I would have loved to have seen him figure one out for that.

Here's the scary part. Team A was up by only four with 30 seconds to go and they had the ball. That kind of small difference near the end of regulation time starts to give me heart palpitations. However, my partner came through like a trooper. He called B1 for an intentional foul (totally correct call). When Coach B yelled "you can't make that call at this point in the game - are you nuts?" he whacked him. Team A made 3 out of 4 FTs, then he called another intentional on the throw in - again it was the right call. They made both this time. Down by nine with only 15 seconds left, Coach B called off the dogs and team A was able to just let the clock run out. I went over to my partner and thanked him profusely for his work. He said he hates overtimes and was hoping team B would screw up.

I could have hugged him. Not that there's anything wrong with that.