Officiating a Team You Formerly Coached

[Mark T. DeNucci, Sr.]

Once our oldest son entered JHS school I made sure that I did not officiate any sport involving his JHS (DeVeaux JHS) or his future HS (Start HS). And since I am know a VP of the athletics boosters organization at Start HS I doubt if I will ever officiate an event involving these two schools.

As it has already been stated, you can officiate a perfect game and it can still come back to bite you in your tuchus.

A number of years back, actually over 15 years back, the assignor of the league in which my HS was still a member, knew I was going to be in town to visit relatives and wanted me to officiate a boys' varsity game between my HS (ranked in the state's top 10 at the time) and another HS. I had the time to officiate the game but didn't because far too many people would have recognized me from my playing days when my HS won 17 league chamipionships in 21 years and I played on two of those teams (I think I broke my arm patting myself on my back, ).

On the other hand, back in the day (over 30 years ago) when I was first officiating women's college basketball and my sister was playing golf for the Univ. of Miami's women's golf team I would officiate 5 or 6 games a year where UM was the visiting team even though the assignor knew my sister attended UM. Of course it was different back then, after the game each and every player and coach of both teams would shake the officials hands and thank them for taking the time to officiate the game. And I am talking about schools like U of Miami, Florida State, U of Florida, Florida Int'l. U, U of South Florida, and the like. One time I called the last four fouls on UM's captain in a game and she didn't talk to me for a week, because we were dating, .

MTD, Sr.