It's when all three officials carpool together to the game. You know, a milage a trois.

http://www.forumspile.com/Misc-Applause.gif
:rolleyes:

I've never had outright forfeits in high school in the 5 or so years I've been working. I've had cancellations or teams drop out of leagues (thus losing my games) before.

I've had a number of weird situations before with teams not showing up or things like that:

ONE
One time I showed up for a JV boys game about 30 minutes before game time. I noticed that the lights at the gym were off and no one was home. This rang a bell but I figured sometimes people open the gym late. Alas, it wasn't meant to me. I waited around for a while and no showed up. Interestingly, one of the VARSITY officials showed up as well. I guess he didn't know either. However, I noted that neither one of our partners ever showed up. STRANGE.....BTW this was the AD/Coach's fault. THe game was moved to the opponents gym (different city, different association).

TWO
This situation involved the same school as above. I was schedule for a JV boys game at 5 PM. I showed up about 4:40 PM and my partner is already there. My partner has interesting news. The opposing squad had decided earlier in the day to not bring their JV squad. So the school was ok with it....BUT did not tell the assignor.

So here we are at 5 PM with the varsity squads ready to play. In most circumstances, my partner and I would have reffed it. However, the opposing squad was a very good local team and I guess the assignor wanted a more veteran crew on the game.

So, everyone waited until about 6 PM and then the varsity game finally played.

Odd stuff us refs have to go through....:)

Rookie Mistake
 

When I first started, and worked for several assigners, I showed up for a game at St. Paul High School (Bristol, CT) when the game was actually at St. Paul Middle School (Berlin, CT).

Our football crew schedules V games two years at a time as districts are put together every two years. After one year, one school merged its football program with another and since it changed their schedule, it also affected ours. We happen to find out the week of the game that the change had been made. At least we didn't show up to an empty field on Friday night. Of course there had been AD changes and stuff like that, all the elements necessary to create a snafu. We did ask for and receive payment in full. The state association didn't want to back us up and said that the school only had to offer us another contract at a future date to make up for this mess. Our contention was we had a contract and if we broke it like the school did, we would face suspension by the association. Yes, we probably won't be invited back to that school again. That's okay.