Men's Rec Leagues

[coach41]

So, I guess I'll follow up on this as I had a couple of Intramural games at a local university last night. I was running a little late (left work later than I wanted and had to wade through traffic).

I got to the gym just at game time and jumped into the first game a couple of minutes late. The first game was a "Graduate Students Division" game. It was a battle of some older but huge guys (several guys 6'3" or taller) and some younger and smaller guys (which did have one guy about 6'2" or 6'3")

For an intramural game and of what I remembered of the league (I hadn't done it in a couple of seasons), the game was pretty good. The older guys, with their height, dominated early. However, the young guys, with their young legs battled back. It was pretty an even battle deep into the second half.

However, several incidents reminded me why I didn't ref adult leagues too much:

At one point in the 2nd half, the big guy from the young team and another big guy from the old team started jawwing. I tried to seperate them, alas being 5'10" with a couple of 6 footers standing over me, I did little to prevent them from talking to each other. I ended up just giving them "double T's" and life went on. Maybe the guys just needed to get their anger out of the system.

Then toward the end of the game, the young team just unraveled. They started jawwing about me missing an out of bounds call (possibly). Then, when the point guard of the young team drove to the hoop, he was hit pretty hard. Both my partner and I got the foul. However, the guard being the great guy he was, decided to swing an elbow back at the defender.

We issued a "T" to the point guard and ejected him. Then finally, after all the commotion, my partner correctly called out of bounds on one of the players from the younger team. THe player proceeded to boot the ball the length of the court after the call. My partner (with about 15 seconds left) simply just called the game at that point.

Fortunately for us, the 2nd game (with undergrads) went much more smoothly.

That was my evening. Do I regret taking the game? Nah, it was fine. But I do know why I try to avoid taking too many of these games. Knuckleheads do certainly take the fun out of basketball.