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

[Stat-Man]

The roughest part with this year is that the middle school and CYO games that didn't take place last year are being played again but the number of officials didn't return to pre-COVID levels. Long story short, there's more games and fewer officials, so those of us who officiate subvarsity games are being asked to work double or tripleheaders. I've also been a last-second varsity fill-in due to illness and the overall lack of officials to cover games on the busiest of days. Recently, my CYO assignor was so shorthanded one weekend that he had me work three games at one site and, after a break for lunch and travel, had me go elsewhere to do two more games. I'm glad my season is nearly over because I've felt physically and mentally drained. (And I know this will likely happen again this spring because we're even more shorthanded with baseball and softball umpires).

Players haven't been too much of an issue, but coaches are definitely chirping more. I had a MS girls coach respond with a loud "Seriously?" when I called an obvious foul on her player. I've also had to whack a JV team's assistant coach one game only to officiate there a week later and whack the head coach after he made unsporting comments similar to those that got his assistant in trouble.

On the plus side, it seems like more ADs than usual are doing what they can to show their appreciation for officials throughout all of this. YMMV.