Get in, get done, get out.
 

First one of the season. Partner arrives for GV game 5 minutes before tip off. I was the U but did the books. No pre-game. Several instances would have come up in a pre-game that happened in the game. I am just glad it is over.

I am just glad it is over too.:D

What was his excuse?

Her excuse was that her husband dropped her car keys and she could not find them. She is always late.

We have a guy like that. Never on time. Used to arrive with his 3 kids in tow and can't understand why he is not getting better games and moving up. No one care to officiate with him. He's not a bad official - just always late so you can never pre-game etc. His tardiness makes a poor reflection on his partners who are there doing their jobs correctly!

During Christmas vacation week, I had a partner show up for an afternoon varsity game as the anthem was playing. He was fully dressed and ready to go, but it was an awkward first half.

I know I'm preaching to the choir here, but...... this has nothing to do with basketball. The same people are always late for dinner, practice, games, meetings, doctor's appointments, etc. While occasionally there are some "reasons" or legitimate "excuses", most times its inconsiderate folks who don't plan properly and think the world revolves around them.....

As a coach for many yrs, in many different sports, I always knew what player would be late for the game - regardless if it was 1 PM on a Sunday, 9 AM on a Saturday, or 8 PM on a Tues. I always felt sorry for the kids who were the pawns and had no choice. Shame.

OK, I'm off my soap box.....

Had my first one-man crew experience of the year last night.

Local Christain School varsity, which is equal in play level to freshman/C team in the area. Here, all games at all levels are 3-man, Jr. High on up except for the occasional scheduling challenge when we don't have enough officials and go 2-man in lower level games to compensate.

The major exception is the Christian schools. Everything is two-man. not sure why, but that's for someone else to figure out. Pay is better than "regular" varsity, and the games are played with excellent sportsmanship so I'm not complaining.

Anyway, my partner went to the wrong Christain school last night. So, for the first quarter of the girls game I was hustling FT line to FT line, doing my best to keep things in control. Game went fairly well, and fouls were easy to call since the girls usually apologized to each other when fouling. :D

Partner showed during the quarter break and felt quite bad about missing the early part of the game. Good guy, and good official - sometimes it just happens!

Years ago, the local high school in my town was a 5A (largest classification in Texas) school that played in a district with schools we didn't work and were closer to a metro area. We worked the local school's non-district games, but not their district, as their district foes insisted on using the metro chapter's officials. That was fine, and we still did the subvarsity games. One night, I was out there on a JV doubleheader and one of the varsity officials didn't show. Turned out that he went to another school 25 miles away that happened to start with the same letter, but that was it. OK, mistakes like that happen, but instead of coming to the game late, he went home. If he worked in my current chapter, he'd be out for a while, if not forever.

Last year, I was late for the first time in my CAREER to a game. I sat in a parking lot style traffic for almost 35 minutes and there was no way around it. I still blame myself for not anticipating something that might go wrong. We file late and no-show game reports, but no one is going to get killed for being late once in a blue moon.

The only flip side of this is that I've heard coaches ***** and moan about late arrivals, yet concede that they've been late to games as a team before. Its like their excuse of not being able to get a bus is justified, but any officials' isn't.

I had the same experience a few weeks ago, Partner shows up 3 minutes before tipoff. He's a great ref and a good guy but for some reason is always running last minute. It was a fairly big conference game with one team being in the top twenty in Chicago. Three man, and game went smoothly. I don't even ask anymore.

Enough said. :D








































IT'S A DAMMM JOKE PEOPLE!!! RELAX!!!

Me too on Saturday...except I had a partner! Middle School tourney, my partner and I had 3 games. He walked up in uniform ready to go (except for the gray hooded sweatshirt...I knew I was in trouble right away) as the teams were taking the floor. He joked not to worry, this was his first game ever...he wasn't far from wrong. He made calls all over the floor, his mechanics were too haphazard to even classify as sloppy, and he looked lost much of the time, though I will give him credit for listening to and trying to apply most of what I suggested. But the worst was when he went over to the table to report a timeout and just stayed there. I finally went over to see what was going on, and he was checking his text messages (phone in the pocket of the aforementioned gray hoodie). At that point I read him the riot act and told him not to leave the floor again and not to look at his phone until our last game was over!

Well, I have since had a discussion with a longtime official in our association. The long and short of it is that he welcomed me to the club.