"Cannot wait until......."

[BillyMac]

Originally Posted by JRutledge

This has been a very rough year. I have noticed that all the officials I have talked to at this time of year have said almost the very same thing when you ask them, "How is your season going?" Almost to a man or a woman, most have said, "I cannot wait until it is over." It seems like that is a common thing this year. So I ask, is this your feeling about the season? Is this probably the feeling because of the Covid stress that has been added, or is this normal to most of you

Twenty percent of our 270 (down from a high a 320 three years ago) local members were inactive due to COVID this season, yet we had a full schedule to cover for over seventy-five high schools and many middle schools. So the eighty percent of us that were active had to cover for the the twenty percent that were inactive. This meant many doubleheaders, tripleheaders, and few off days for us. I just completed a streak beginning the day after Martin Luther King Day of 22 game dates (with many doubleheaders) in 30 days, something that I haven't done in many many years since I gave up recreation and travel games.

And I've had it with the masks (and I'm a mask proponent). I hate wearing the mask in my games, using a stupid electronic whistle, and I hate politely telling snot-nosed kids to, "Mask up", to be ignored because we don't have any mask penalties (sit a tick) this season (like we did last season).

The extra games and lack of rest this season have aggravated the severe arthritis in my right foot, making my officiating both physically and mentally challenging (as well as making my daily cardio gym workouts (I'm a heart attack survivor) very challenging).

It's gotten to the point where I'm looking at game clocks and saying to myself, "Please run down", even in exciting games.

And many of my games were assigned with little lead time, last minute changes (game assigned overnight for the next afternoon) due to COVID limiting the ability of schools to field a healthy team, or COVID limiting the availability of healthy bus drivers. Makes it hard to plan one's week.

I've been looking at middle school schedules online wondering, "When will this end?" (my local board had to politely refuse to assign middle school officials in two major city school systems due to our lack of available afternoon officials, so these two cites postponed their middle school games until later in the season, just starting last week and scheduling through March 10, 2022, about month later than normal).

Over forty-plus years I've occasionally gotten mentally "fatigued" in mid-February during a few seasons, but nothing even close to like this season.