I had something close to this in a weekend tournament. We were working on a Saturday night and a couple of the organizers of the tournament went to get a pump for the basketball and came back about an hour later and it was obvious they had stopped somewhere for a "refreshment". In the game after that, they had to go to the car for something at halftime. After the games we found out they had a cooler in the parking lot and were having a few throughout the night. Before I left for the evening, they invited me to stay and have one. I couldn't turn it down.

Have a great night Junker!! You will do awesome.


I am just sitting here and counting down the last 2.75 hours until my one JH game tonight. HAHAHHAHA! It will be a relief to finally be home by 6pm at least one night.

Have a good one!


Mr. Motivation

Private School Adult Beverage
 

Believe it or not, there's a private school in our area that provides a cooler filled with ice, a few cans of soda, a few bottles of water, and a few cans of beer, to officiating crews for Friday night games or weekend tournament games. We all love working there. And the basketball, especially on the boys side, is pretty good too.

Well, heck ya... I would too! ;)

Friday night for me:

Homecoming for the first place team against a heated rival. Schools are about 5 miles apart off the same main road so gym is packed with fans from both teams.

During regulation I get to give the stare...er, I mean I have game mgmt remove a fan who decides to jump up and down on the sideline yelling bullsh!t a few times following a relatively easy OOB call by me.

Game goes to OT. 2 minutes left in OT Visitors foul star home player pretty hard. Easy foul for me to call. But then star player decides he needs to talk sh!t to his opponent. Easy T for me to call. (2nd Friday in a row I 'T' this player up; he's a Parade All-America football player and has a "I am special" mentality on the court; but I digress). After making sure everything is straight with my partners I go to report both fouls to the table. All of a sudden there is a big commotion behind me. I turn around and there is a fight in the stands. That's a first for me, but at least the 3rd time this season there has been an off-court fight in this conference's basketball games.

After about 10 minute delay the game finished pretty uneventfully. I couldn't wait to get home. :)

I've been in DC this week and got a chance to work some JUCO and a high school game tonight. I went to a new high school and the game was supposed to be pretty good. What the assigner forgot about is the coach at this new school coached at another school the last few years and did not care for me. It seems he doesn't think he should get a T or thrown out for jumping around and yelling. In the second quarter of the game there is a high dribble right in front of him. He jumps up, stomps a little and yells at me. I blacked out momentarily. The next thing I knew the other team was shooting two shots with the lane cleared and I was standing at half court waiting to inbound the ball. Hey, at least we are both consistent: He consistently acts up and I consistently T him up for it.

Tom, they will never learn.

I finally had things slow down so I could do a post-game. Things went very well. I was with 2 veterans and we flexed and stayed in our areas very well. The girl's game got to be a bit of a blow out, but the boy's game was everything that it was supposed to be. The 2nd place team came out on a 9-0 run and was in control of the game the whole way through. The 1st place (and home team) played catch up all night. The 9 point margin was the biggest of the night so things were tight all the way. It was a great night at the office. Hopefully I'll get an assignment like that every year. Our referee emailed me telling me that he put in the game report that I was very sharp that night. It was a big compliment to me and I appreciated it.

Congrats on the game. File those memories away in the databank for replay after those "other" nights.

Thanks, it is filed away with all of the other firsts...first game, first varsity game, first college game, it was definitely a great experience. I'm hoping my performance will help me get more of those type of games in the future. Our assignor was at the game and came to talk to us afterwards. He only had one little nugget for me to work on. I tend to drop my head after I call a foul and head to the bench. It makes me look less confident. I'm curing that problem asap. I did that early in my career and just fell back into the habit.