Ugh!

[Juulie Downs]

After taking last year off for personal reasons, I am getting back into the swing of this reffing thing slowly. Freshman girls today -- game ended 44-11, V won. score was 26-3 at the half.

Partner was just, ugh. She wasn't a ball watcher, exactly, but she wasn't watching off ball either. And her philosophy was that the further behind a team is, the more they need every little chippie foul called so that they "wouldn't get frustrated".

She meant so they wouldn't take out their frustration in hard fouls, I know, but in my experience, the logic is just as bad that way. Girls that get too many fouls called on them (and don't have the experience to understand that situation) just give up trying not to foul and hack away. Which is of course what happened. Only she said the hacking was because we'd "let up on calling it her way". We called 14 fouls on them in the first half. I don't see how that's "letting up!"

She also decided that since the assistant coach got control of the head coach when said hc was yelling about a bad call, she'd let the AC stand, walk around and communicate with her during the game. Although she didn't tell me that until AFTER I'd told the head coach that the AC needed to sit and be quiet.

She couldn't run worth beans, she was even worse than me, and when she was new lead but the play got ahead of her, she didn't keep hustling down to the endline, she just stopped where ever she was and reffed from there. My gosh. And then called things anywhere on the floor.

I was afraid that I'd have a rough time coming back, and do some of that kind of stuff, and I have made some sort of brain-fart calls in the last couple of weeks. But I guess this thing is more like riding a bike than I realized. I was a good ref before my bad personal year, and I'm a good ref now. I kinda like that feeling!