College Scorekeepers, Timekeepers, Shot Clock Operators ...
 

A few of our retired high school officials have banded together to form an organization that trains and "assigns" (more of a pool) college scorekeepers, timekeepers, and shot clock operators for New England and New York colleges at all levels, both men and women. Great way to stay involved with the game. Not my cup of tea, for now. I can still get my "basketball fix" by working middle school games with severe arthritis in my right foot.

Long Time Since Posting
 

We attended the UConn vs. GT women's game in December and all 3 officials were masked during the game. Have watched a good bit of UConn and UGA women's and UConn men's and the women's game officials have always been masked whereas only individual/occasional masking for the men's officials.

At the end of the day it'll be interesting to see how this shakes out since the virus is here to stay and this seems to be moving from pandemic to endemic (i.e., something we live with and treat instead of try to prevent). I can see it moving to being an individual decision going forward but, at least for the higher profile (i.e., on TV) women's games, it seems like the officials are wearing masks.

Not physically, but mentally i have found that keeping the shot clock is harder than being on the floor officiating. I cringe at the thought of high schools going to a shot clock.

Medical Exemptions ...
 

Thanks for reminding us that some can't get the COVID vaccine for medical reasons. All the more reason for those of us who can get the vaccine to get it, to protect those who can't get it.

Hopefully, as more of us get the vaccine and/or more us get COVID (and natural immunity to some degree) and survive, we can reach something close to herd immunity, and knock down this infection to something similar to seasonal influenza, with annual vaccines based on the "variant of the day", some will get sick, some schools and businesses will suffer, some will die, but, hopefully, not to the extent of the last twenty months.

Until then we need to do the best we can to prevent preventable deaths. Get vaccinated if possible. Wear masks in indoor public settings. If possible, stay home from work/school if you feel ill. Test when necessary. Stay away from gigantic crowds (I skipped Christmas Eve mass). Hopefully scientists will continue to come up with better and better therapeutics/treatments.

My daughter-in-law is Chinese. People in east Asian countries (China, Japan, Korea, Vietnam, etc.) have been masking up during cold and flu season for years (some also doing it for particulate air pollution from burning coal).

Save for a miracle, COVID isn't going away anytime soon. This is not your great grandfather's smallpox, your grandfather's polio, or your father's measles.

High School Shot Clocks ...
 

While I tend to agree with Ignats75, many states have successfully moved to high school shot clocks, and a few have done it for many years.

I think that the key to success for high school shot clocks is to keep the rules as simple as possible based on purpose and intent, to force the team in control to shoot the ball and hit the ring in about half of a minute. No "stalling". All "resets" after a loss of control should be to about half of a minute. No held ball, kicking, frontcourt, backcourt, etc. exceptions. Maybe not even for out of bounds deflections by the defense (like ten seconds backcourt). Maybe not even for timeouts (like ten seconds backcourt). Keep it simple, the shot clock is either running, or reset to about half of a minute, never stopped. No stop button, just a reset button (like ten seconds backcourt). I fully realize that this will never fly, it's just that I'm wearing my rose colored glasses.

Survival Of The Fittest ...
 

Some say that this Omicron variant is doing us a favor by being very easily spread, but by not being as "fatal" as previous variants. Maybe it's the beginning of some type of end.

This is Darwinism at its best. If COVID is too "fatal", it will kill off all its human hosts (a virus is a parasite, it needs humans to survive), and then, with no more human hosts it will became as extinct as the dinosaurs (just don't tell that to my backyard chickens). So through mutations (variants) and natural selection the "fittest" variants will be the ones to infect a lot of human hosts, but not kill them, allowing those variants to survive and to live another day, reproduce, and have lots of "COVID babies", and the beat goes on.

Of course, lurking somewhere out there in the animal kingdom is another "novel" virus waiting to make the "big jump" from animals (pigs, ducks, bats, great apes, deer, etc.) to humans. Hopefully we'll be better prepared for it next time. Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me. Wait ... I'm being told ... 1918 ??? You sure ??? Never mind.

Presenteeism ...
 

Back when I was teaching we had problems with "absenteeism" (playing hooky) but we also had problems with "presenteeism", students coming to school sick (colds, flu, pink eye, hand and mouth disease, fifth disease, lice, etc.), thus infecting others, including teachers. Mostly a problem caused by two parents working, with no baby sitter. And then there were students who prided themselves on their attendance, even when sick. For this reason I joined forces with the school nurse to do away with annual "perfect attendance" awards.

A classic case of hypocrisy, I was also an offender. Thirty years of teaching and I had only used one single sick day (influenza, despite getting the flu vaccine every year), even though I had accumulated the contracted maximum of 195 sick days. It was easier to come to work sick then it was to clean up the mess left in the wake of a substitute teacher. Almost every winter those "germ-ridden" kids would cough and sneeze in my "Petri dish" of a classroom and I would get a cold, often leading to bronchitis, or a sinus infection. I would get an antibiotic from a walk-in-clinic and be back in the classroom with no sick days.

After retiring from teaching, where I got at least one cold (usually two) every year for thirty years, I've only gotten a single cold over the past fifteen year since retiring (including working thirteen years as a chemist). I guess that being exposed to all sorts of rhinoviruses over thirty years (and noxious chemical fumes over thirteen years) gave me some type of natural immunity to colds. Of course, I'm no longer exposed to those "germ-ridden" kids.