|
This made me think of the most ridiculous situation I've had this year.
I walk into the gym for a Girls Varsity game and see two little girls sitting at the table. Thought nothing of it. I find my partner and we start pregaming. During this we decide that he is going to be the R. He was an older guy who has done HS for years and from what I understand he also does some small college ball. Well he goes to check the books and I realize that one of the little girls is filling out the lineups. Again, I think nothing of it. Game is about to start, he takes the game ball and heads into position for the jump. At this point I'm a little confused because we still have two little girls sitting at the scorer's table. One presumably to control the clock and the other would be the Home scorekeeper.
So I start thinking that maybe he has worked a game at this school with them working the table before and that they will have everything under control. So I decide I'm willing to give it a chance if he is.
After the tip the home team gains possession and sets up their half court offense. I'm lead and out of nowhere my partner blows his whistle and signals for an official's timeout. He then looks at me and points to the clock. (gym had one scoreboard/clock and it was positioned directly above the table) I look up at the clock and see 15:42 left. I immediately said to myself, "this is going to be a long game." He goes over and gets the correct time on the clock and we resume play.
Midway through the 1st quarter I'm T opposite bench and I hear some fan say, "Hey ref, the score is wrong." I ignored it and then the rest of the crowd begins to harmonize in a great rendition of the "Score's wrong!!!" chant.....awesome. At the next timeout me and my partner go over to the table to try to figure out if the score is correct or not. The visitor's scorekeeper happens to be the AC and has decided to sit on the bench. So during the timeout we have to pull her away from her team to match books. During this the little girl keeping the book keeps telling the V AC that if she was sitting at the table we wouldn't have these problems. Then the AC keeps telling her no, if you payed attention, yadda yadda yadda. So a miniature pissing match breaks out between them. So now we have to figure out the score and prevent the scorekeepers from yelling at each other. Also awesome. We get the score right and move on.
End of 1st half. Home's HC walks to bench and starts telling the scorer that the score should be ** -**. My partner turns to him and instructs him that if he has a problem he can ask us but he can't stand there and tell the "official" scorer what the score is. We then start comparing books. The home HC thinks they should have one more point. We look and see that both books have the same score. We then notice that both books were wrong. Each book had credited one player with hitting one 3 pointer. My partner and I both vividly remember two 3 pointers and the numbers of the players who had shot them so we correct the score and add a point for the home team. In talking to confim this with each we realize that the one that was missed was because we had put up a late signal for the 3 pointer. So at that point it seemed that the scorer's were marking the points down before the signal was given so it wasn't seen.
Anyway, all of these shenanigan's lasted for the rest of the game and the nonsense between the scorer's got more and more heated every time.
To add to the ridiculousness, V1 steals the ball and is on a fast break and goes up for an out of control layup and ends up faceplanting into the metal door jam that is along the endline. She had a defender guarding her but little to no contact occured so the only call i made was the OOB when she threw the ball up "toward" the goal and it landed OOB. Girl was on the ground for what seemed to be 10 minutes while she was bleeding profusely. Luckily a dad in the crowd was a doctor and was able to help her out. She ended up going straight to the hospital. Again, awesome.
Game ends, Home wins by 1 (of course). Fans start making remarks about us cheating and adding points and letting their girls get hurt.....
After the game was over my partner suggested to the Home HC that he should STRONGLY consider using adults at the table.
Ended up doing another game for the Visitor's later in the season and the girl who got hurt still serves as a captain but is out for the season with a face injury of some kind.
Other than the occasional overly excited dad during sub varsity games, this is the only time I could have or should have replaced anyone at the table.
|