[Mark Padgett]

Here's what happened. We formed a rules committee to come back to the Board next month with recommendations. This is pretty standard for us. The committee has five members, three are refs and two are coaches. One coach is at the HS level and the other coaches a 4th and a 7th grade team.

My suggestions will be to go to running halves in all games and limit the timeouts to just the three 60 seconds. The length of the halves would depend upon the grade level. We would go to stop clock at the two minute mark in only the second half if the point differential was 10 or less and back to running clock if it gets back up over 10. I think the committee will agree and bring these proposed changes back to the Board. There's a good chance they will approve them.

BTW - this is the league that doesn't recognize a coaching box and allows only players on the floor to request timeouts. While it's no big deal to me and some other refs if we allowed coaches to request from the bench, we have so many first and second years refs each year (and many of those are HS kids) that it eliminates a lot of confusion by having the rule this way.

Oh yeah - also, any profanity from a coach or player is an automatic flagrant technical, except we use our judgment at the HS level. What I mean by this is that if, for instance, a HS kid misses an open layup and mutters something at himself under his breath and we hear it, we can issue just a technical without it being flagrant. That's about the only exception and we have only experienced refs working the HS level, so it works out OK.

I'm still open to any other suggestions out there. Thanks.

Also BTW - I ran into (figuratively, not literally) the Immortal Dave yesterday at a store and he told me he is quitting reffing! He said he really doesn't enjoy it anymore. However, when I asked him if he would consider coming back to our kids rec league, he said he might, since it's actually fun. Those of you who have been around this site for a while know to whom I'm referring. Dave is the all-time champion of sharp, sarcastic comebacks to coaches, players and especially parents. I've learned a lot from him over the years.