Girl blocks boy's shot!

[Rufus]

Originally Posted by truerookie

Pure F-U-N-D-A-M-E-N-T-A-L-S !!. This is what girls bring to the game of basketball. boys may be more athletic; girls more fundamentally sound.

Agree with this completely. A bunch of folks I've worked with can't stand officiating women's games but I prefer them most of the time. Instead of trying to jump out of the gym they seem to be more concerned with executing the fundamentals and that makes for an enjoyable officiating experience.

Contrast that, however, with my experience last Friday night during an 8th grade girls game that was 5-4 at the half time (one team scored 4 in the 1st quarter, the other team scored 5 in the second quarter). I had honestly thought with the proliferation of women's basketball at the professional and collegiate level that more talent would have filtered down to the sub-varsity level by now. Maybe I just got stuck with a couple of really bad teams who missed out on the talent pool.

[Mark Padgett]

A few years ago, when Portland had a women's pro team, they used to hold their practices at a venue in Beaverton where I routinely worked kids games on nights and weekends. One Saturday, they were practicing right after I finished my shift. One of their coaches came over to me and my partner and asked if we would stay for a while and work a scrimmage. They said they would pay each of us for doing so. We said sure. They then recruited a bunch of "gym rats" - guys who were just there to get some exercise shooting baskets - to play them.

Although these guys were just a pick up team, they thoroughly demolished the pro women. The coaches called it off after about 20 minutes. They weren't keeping score but if they were, it probably was about 60-20. At that level, as good as the women were, they had nowhere near the size and speed of even those unorganized guys and it showed.

Hey - I still talk about the time I "worked the pros".