I lived in Panama City, Florida from 2001-04 and called games throughout the panhandle. It was not at all unusual to get police escorts off the floor, to our cars and out of town...off into the scary, dark Florida backwoods night
. High school basketball games were often the biggest events of the week/month/year in some of those small towns and the locals took them very seriously...tiny, old gyms were typically packed to the rafters and I loved working there. I'd guess 3-4 times a month my crew would "earn" a police escort of some type. There were armed policemen/women at
every high school game I ever worked in FL and they were very proactive to ensure there were no incidences. Two drunks who got into a fight in the stands at one game spent the night in jail...that's the only "action" I was ever aware of.
My one question to Artar is how much experience your partner had? I know you said he was a vet, but one of my pet peeves is assignors assigning new guys together to work games with little-to-no veteran experience. 2-3 years of experience doesn't necessarily make a vet. Very tough situation for your second game ever
...it gets better.