What a night!

[Welpe]

Please bear with me as I share my story from tonight...

As some of you know, this is my first year officiating football. Due to a shortage of officials and a huge number of games we had to cover this week, I worked a JV/Varsity double header tonight. The varsity game was the 5th game I've ever done and to say I was nervous was an understatement! It was a full house, with the stands overflowing and plenty of energy in the air. At about 65 degrees at kick off, it was a perfect night for football.

When the band started playing the National Anthem, I realized that despite the warmth, my arms were covered in goose bumps! Nervous and excited, the memories of playing football under the Friday night lights came flooding back and I realized how much I missed the game.

After the anthem, our crew met at the 50 and wished each other a good game, while also joking with me about how new my knickers were. We ran out to our positions for the kickoff and away we went.

The Varsity game was much faster than the JV game and at first I was struggling to keep up with reading my keys. By half-time things were flowing and I was feeling pretty good. I only had a few flags, one of them being a personal foul against the visitors, who were on defenseBduring a 60 something yard touchdown run by the home team. One of the B players earholed a defenseless A player, roughly 30 yards behind the run. I even remembered to get the player's number....

The other one worth mentioning was a nasty spearing against the home team. One of the home defensive backs dropped his head and ran nearly full speed into the ball carrier, nailing him right in the ribs. I flagged it and afterwards, the player asked what he did. When I told him it was spearing, he said "What's that?" I actually had to explain to this kid that it is illegal to tackle that way.

Neither game was particularly close, but I loved every minute of it. It was a great night and I'm only wishing I had taken up football officiating sooner.

I hope everyone's night was as good as mine.

Thanks for indulging the rookie.