[Mark Padgett]

There are three middle schools in the school district in which I live. I work tons of MS and HS rec games at these three schools. At my game last night, my partner and I were discussing which of the three was the best to work at, and why. He lives here in town, also. Although the gym we were at last night (Fowler) is only four minutes from my house, it has the worst floor you could imagine. It's tile set over concrete. There is absolutely no "give" whatever. Over the years, I've worked literally hundreds of games there. It's like my "home court". I'm sure it's responsible for determining which meds I need for my poor knees.

The next closest MS (Twality) is about seven minutes away. It has an nice old wooden floor but it's so old there are some cracks and little bumps mostly on the sidelines. Also, there's something wrong with the heating system as it's always really hot in that gym.

The third, which is where I'll be working tonight (Hazelbrook), is about 10 minutes away and is a relatively new school with a really nice new wood floor. The heat and A/C are well balanced and there's a lot of room to inbound on the endlines. I love working there. Unfortunately, our local kids rec league uses only the other two schools, since they are within our HS (Tigard) boundary, which is the defining method for determining the rec league in our school district in which a kid would play. This newer MS is within the HS boundary of the other HS (Tualatin) in our district, so I only get assigned games from the "competitive" kids league there, since that league is broken up as to HS boundaries and I can get assigned to any game in the entire metro area in that league.

I'm also working tonight with a long time veteran who makes the game even that more enjoyable. I wish I could look forward to all my games with this much enthusiasm. Oh yeah, it's 8th grade girls.