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In my area, only one official is assigned to jr. high games. An old coach of mine (who was also an official) was blackballed from the association for suggesting that two officials be assigned to those games. The reasons for it are purely economic. The schools don't want to pay an extra $20CDN a game to have two refs and the officials association is unwilling to reduce the rates for these games. I can't really blame the schools, this is in Ontario and our current provincial government has decimated educational funding. I think it's pretty selfish of the association because it means that these players are getting generally terrible calls because there is only one, inexperienced ref per game.
Yesterday I did two Junior High girls games on my own. The first game was a blowout and finished pretty quickly. The second game was ridiculous. The home team was in double bonus with about 2 minutes left in the first quarter. (6 minute quarters) One player on the visiting team picked up 4 fouls in the first 2 minutes. These weren't ticky-tack fouls either. The girl with four fouls kept leaping into the path of the dribbler and sticking her hip into the dribblers path. Both girls would go down hard and I'd have to blow the whistle. The home team picked up about six calls for holding because when they'd fight for a loose ball with one hand on the ball and the other grasping their opponents wrist. It would have been so much easier if I'd had a partner. Easily worth $4 or $5 a game.
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