[BillyMac]

This happened over twenty-five year ago. I was a junior varsity official back then.

Team A has a home game and I'm working the junior varsity game. Team A assistant coach, also the junior varsity coach, is ill, and the varsity head coach is coaching in my junior varsity game. The Team A varsity head coach had a reputation of being very hard on officials. He was "old school" in terms of "working the officials" (also the head soccer, and baseball coach). I had observed him several times in varsity games and he always lived up to his reputation, yelling at the officials, taking off his jacket and throwing it at the bench in disgust (his trademark stunt), gesturing at the officials, coaching while standing (seatbelt rule, no coaching box then), earning technical fouls, etc. Of course he thought that he would be able to pull off the same stuff coaching the junior varsity game. I may have been an inexperienced high school official, but I was already a seasoned veteran of the men's recreation league "wars", and I wasn't going to put up with any of his shenanigans. I was polite, yet firm. "Please sit down coach." "Please quiet down coach." "Coach, I can't have you officiating this game." “I’ve heard enough and that’s your warning.” By the second period he was sitting down, coaching his kids, and only spoke up when my partner, or I, made a really tough call that could have gone either way. No technical fouls, but I do remember being mentally exhausted, in terms of game management, by the end of that game.

Fast forward to the next week. Saturday night game. Team A is now at Team C. I've got the junior varsity game, and the Team A assistant coach, also the junior varsity coach, is healthy and is back coaching the junior varsity kids. Thank God. My wife, now ex, often came with me to Saturday night games, as we would go out to dinner after the varsity game. Midway through the second period I made eye contact with my wife to make sure she's all set, and I notice that she's sitting right next to the Team A varsity head coach, having an animated discussion with him, pointing at me. For the rest of the game I was thinking all kinds of crazy thoughts. Is she telling him that I had a tough game last week with a "crazy" varsity coach in my junior varsity game? Is he telling her how the young "whippersnapper" in the junior varsity game had the nerve to sit him down in a game last week?

It actually turned out quite well. Team A varsity head coach told my wife that I had done an excellent job in his junior varsity game the previous week, and that he wished that some varsity officials would not only quiet him down, but also quiet down his coaching opponents, but that they didn't "have the guts" like me.

He's still coaching. Switched from the town he taught in, and retired from, to the town where he lives, and switched from boys to girls basketball. He's mellowed. Maybe because he's older. Maybe it has something to do with coaching girls. But he's still tough on officials, and although I'm sure that he doesn't remember me from way back then, he knows that I'm, now a varsity official, not going to let him make a fool out of me, or my partner.