Game from hell

[Mark Padgett]

The point others are making about you not being able to prevent everyone from getting hurt at any time is a good one. About three years ago I was working a boys varsity level game and we only had about 3 fouls total in the first half. We were in the middle of the fourth quarter and had only 2 fouls total in that half at that point. Believe me, we weren't missing anything, either. Both teams were very well coached and both teams were playing defense with their feet. In fact, on a couple of the fouls, the players who got called actually said "Sorry" to the players they fouled!

All of a sudden, the offensive post player turned around and punched his defender right in the nose! Yes, there was blood and a bunch more players joined in. We even had the benches empty.

After we straightened out the mess, we called the game. I asked both coaches what they think really happened after such a mild game and one said, "I really don't know" and the other said, "Beats the (insert expletive here) out of me?"

To this day, I still don't know what really happened. The players weren't talking.

I guess the lesson here is that you can call a lot of fouls or you can call a few fouls but an injury can happen at any time totally unrelated to the number of fouls you call.

Go figure.