[Eckley]

I officiated 2 Girls CYO games last night - the 4th, 5th, and 6th grade "JV" game and the 7th and 8th grade "Varsity" game. It was an interesting night. My partner was an older gentleman who looked like exactly like the biker from the Village People and he was wearing black sweatpants with cargo pockets, which I found a bit odd. He also switched incorrectly and made a couple of calls that made us look bad, like granting a timeout to Team B when Team A had possession. In any case, I didn't mind working with him that much as he was a pretty nice guy. The "JV" game came down to the wire and the fans were insane. I was thinking, "these people are crazy, we're talking about 11 year old girls here." This was the first time I officiated a game with this age group, and I figured before hand that the fans would be a little more sedate. There were more than 20 held balls during the game and the fans started to get a little peeved at us because we kept calling held balls, and I have no idea what call they would have preferred instead. At one point, B1 and A1 were in A's backcourt, each with a hand on the ball and each moving. I called a held ball here and people went nuts! Early in the varsity game I called a push on B1, who was guarding the ball handler A1. It wasn't a hard foul, but it was definitely a foul. B Coach starts chirping that "This isn't tiddlywinks! This is the Schuylkill League! You can't call that a foul!" I told him I had no idea what tiddlywinks was and that it was obviously something from before my time (I'm 27). He later said that he didn't like that I didn't allow more contact and a more physical game. The game would have probably gotten out of hand if we didn't call close fouls. Then I could imagine the coaches complaining about "girls getting killed out there!" In any case, it was an interesting experience and I had fun. Just thought I'd share.