[golfdesigner]

Friday night, Varsity Contest....
We did the usual at the coin toss, "Coaches is everyone properly and legally equipped according to the rules and ready to play this evening?" The answer from both coaches was a confident "yes."

Well, 2-minutes into the game, the visiting coach commented to our linesman, "hey ref... I don't think #2 has a butt pad." We check, sure enough, no butt pad. Since the lack of equipment was pointed out by the opposing coach, we felt we had no option but to toss a flag, and give the home coach a USC and a 15-yd walk-off. We did go over to #2's coach and tell him what we were going to have to do. We suggested he check all the other players to make sure we didn't have to give him a second USC for the equipment or lack thereof.

As a measure of preventative officiating, we went into the home team's huddle and told them, "as a measure of preventive officiating, are all of you wearing all of the equipment you were issued and are supposed to be wearing?" One tackle shook his head no, so we suggested that he get off the field until you got properly attired with all the equipment you were issued.

The home coach called timeout, and about 9 or 10 players headed for the locker room.... hmmmm I wonder why they were going there?

When the time out expired, we blew the RFP, and when it got down to about 2-seconds, he called another TO, so he bought about 2-1/2 minutes total so his players could go to the locker room and get properly equipped. When those players got back to the sideline another 3 or 4 headed for the locker room. We probably had 13 or 14 players go and get "fixed".

After the half time intermission, when we checked with the coach to determine what direction he wanted to kick to start the second half, we asked if he did an "audit" of his player's equipment. His response was something like I'll probably get a few calls from moms, wanting to know why the coach was yanking on her child's pants, because he made sure they were all wearing the proper pads.

Anybody else had anything like this?