Most embrassing moment
 

Let's lighten things up a little! What's the most embarassing thing that has happened to you on the court? :o Having asked the question, I'll start. Several years ago at 7/8 boys game we were wearing our jackets during warm-up. I went to the bathroom with 4 minutes on the clock. As teams are coming on the the floor for tip-off, we remove jackets in front of table. Went to take mine off and I had zipped up the drawstring in my pants. :eek: Had to unzip my pants, take out the string, and zip them up again in front of the crowd. As my partner said, "Oh well, it's gotta get better from here!"

14 days ago. I was in the trail and moved to get a better look at two players close to me. I moved right into the path of the running defensive player as she swiped the ball from the offence. Both players were comming straight at me with the ball on the floor rolling around my feet. They wanted the ball and I wanted to get the hell away from them. I tried to keep from stepping on the ball as I was knocked into the second row of bleachers by the players. Some girls players are pretty tough.

They had to stop the game as i imbarrasingly crawled out from inbetween the fans. The defensive girl says "are you alright sir"?

Caught one right in the brain bucket......
 

B12 Rec game. Small court. Benches close to sidelines. A setting up what is a pretty good, patient, half-court, set offense and going through their dribbles and passes. B settles into a 2-1-2 zone. I'm T in two-man. Ball passing around perimeter, I'm busy counting closely guarded, stopping, starting, etc.

Ball passes from A1 at top of key to A2 on my wing.....B1 suddenly steps out and quickly pokes the pass away...which was apparently traveling at a good rate of speed and now flies about 10 feet and hits me square in the forehead.....

I shook it off. B1 however was miffed that I "got in the way" of his steal, which, IMO would have gone out of bounds if I wasn't there anyhow.

Grabbing a competitive onball matchup as the C, I aggressively jumped out of bounds to get the right angle to see between the players. As I landed, the defender swatted the ball out cleanly with his hand. Unfortunately, he swatted upwards, like they teach them, and the ball rocketed squarely into my nuts and bounced off me back to him, when he would probably have had a breakaway dunk or layin. Not only did I have to blow it dead since I was OB, I had a hard time pointing, and needed my own officials' TO to recover. Supervisor then made the great snide comment when I go the film about getting too old because my nuts should have been higher up in my pants. So it was embarassing at the game and then 4 days later, too.

I've never been brassed, so I do not have any embrassing moments. :o

Great topic. Always need to learn not to take ourselves too seriously.

A bunch of incidents come to mind. One time my first year, I made a backcourt violation call on a girl who had dribbled over the volleyball (but not the basketball division) line and then went "back." I double checked with my partner and then quickly put the ball back into play. Another time, I was at a camp and we were playing on that rubberized flooring crap. I was busting butt to get back on a fast break, stumbled and hit the deck. No one within half a zip code of me! Even though the rubber floor caused me to stumble, it softened the fall, except for a skinned knee. 2 goof ball officials at the camp gave me some grief, but we all had a good laugh. Then, back when we had that lack of action rule, I went through the whole process on the wrong team! Oh, well. Nobody got killed.

I was working a Girls JV game two years ago. Loose ball is rolling right at me. Girl gets it and steps on my foot as I am trying to back out of the way. I went down backwards and did a reverse summersault and popped back up in time to call a foul. The crowd cheered. The assignor was there and his only words were, "At least you got the call right. Right?"

Did you make your free throws?

anyone had their pants rip or another malfunction. I only had one ref tell me that. Another I saw got nailed in the family jewels:) by an errant pass. Ball remained live.:D

heres a goodone, i was working a boys varsity game earlier this year, and as the trail i was moving to get an open angle, when i rolled my right angle and fell straight on my butt... the gym was packed with about 400 students which were all on my side of the court, so i quickly got up (to a slightly sprained ankle) finished the half and taped up my ankle at halftime :)

ps. i was working with my assignor and he just laughed and said he wasnt looking at me he was looking at his area so he didnt see my fall haha

Several spring to mind:

1. Quite a few years ago, referring a senior girls game (20 year olds). My partner calls a foul, walks to the bench to report it. Signals a "push" to his side and plants both hands on the breasts of the player standing next to him :D thankfully she laughed it off.

2. I was asked to fill in for a ref that did a no show. Didn't have proper pants, so wore my warmup pants, the ones with press studs down the side. On a change of direction, I caught my thumb in the side of them, and ripped my own pants off! I was left standing in a pair of (black) boxer shorts :o

Embarrasing moments?
 

in twenty-five plus years I have had several.

the two highest profile were:
About 15 years ago Boys Varsity Game - I am the trail, bringing the ball up the floor with A1 and B1, just over the mid-court line A1 hands off to A2 and I am now straight lined by A2 to the defenders. B2 claps his hands and the slap reverberates throughout the gym, ...Tweet ... foul on B2. :(
I am the only one in the Gym who doesn't know what happened and I go to the table report and rotate and everything, while the entire facility is just laughing away at my expense. :o
I didn't finid out until half time in the locker room what the deal was! Wow, I learned to move for position on a play quickly.

About five years ago - Girls Varsity Regional final, I am the T working the sideline in the front court - I had stepped down around the 28 foot line to get an angle on a match up with the ball just above that point and when the ball went to the middle I backed up and tripped over my own two feet landed on my bumm and slid OOB. The pass came right back to the match-up in front of me, the ball hit the floor their was a scramble for the ball and it went OOB in front of me, but I had the call no problem perfect mechanics from the kester up while sitting on the floor. :cool:

This is easy.... My second year officiating, I have already gotten the "ref hike" of pulling up your pants about every dead ball. Oh yeah I had also gone from about 300 lbs to around 250.
Fast break, I feel the britches starting to slide down a tad. No worries, we can stop, I can hike and move on. Butt nNNNOOOOOO.... the little weazel has to turn the ball over. So as I stop and begin my pivot to head down the court I feel first one side then the other slide over my non exitent tuckus and now have my pants just below my buttocks. But I press on, run down the court as though I am riding a horse to make sure there is no more "slippage". But the fun keeps going, there is a "bang-bang" play, and I signal out of bounds.
After the game our supervisor comes into the locker room and asks about that specific play. He asks why I didn't call a blocking or charging foul but just went out of bounds. I said "Two reasons, first Ithought they both got to the spot at the same time and there was some REALLLY bad acting, thus no call." He asked what the second reason was, I said "Well, since my pants were about to fall off, I thought that the less moving I did the better, and there is no telling what would have happened if I had to move from the baseline and report the foul!" He thought the second reason was a better reason!

I've had a few...

Switching from T to L in quick transition, I tripped one foot over the other. Did the sommersault thing right into standing up again. Only the scorekeeper saw it.

Have zigged or zagged around a small kid once or twice in my career.

One game I put the wrong pants into my gear bag. They are too small for me now, but they were the only pair in the bag. The +1 was that they showed my muscular legs. :p The -1 was that they didn't fit nicely elsewhere.

So you're saying you planned it that way? Now that is game awareness! I wish I had that skill level, I will work on it.

-Josh

Okay I left out the part about the RED FACE durring the call :p
and the black and blue back side after the game.
:eek:

GV late in the first quarter. We had a foul in the backcourt and I was the new trail. While my partner reported the foul the player tossed the ball to me. We were going to the other end to administer a 1-1. As players were moving to the other end, my partner finished reporting and turned to look for the ball. I moved into what I thought was an open lane and tossed the ball underhanded to him. Hit a girl (about 15 feet away) square in the back with my errant pass. I felt like I had just kicked my own daughter in the shin. I felt terrible and couldn't apologize enough. As we left the floor for half-time, I heard someone call me by name and holler "Nice Pass"

Oh well, I learned a valuable lesson.

You will never be the shill at the milk bottle toss for the carnival??

Thankfully, I wasn't officiating a dart tournament:eek:

I haven't had anything tragic happen but this Saturday I was doing a GV game and about the middle of the 2nd quarter the home team puts a shot up and it get wedged between the rim and the backboard. In a boys game, some boy would show his "superior masculinity" and jump to knock it out but we were lacking that (from the players, not the officials ;) Beat you to the joke:D) on the court. One of the equipment people threw my partner another ball to dislodge the first one. He tosses it to me and I attempt to knock the ball loose. After three tries, I was unsuccessful at freeing that poor little ball :o I hit the stupid thing squarely all three times from underneath but it wouldn't pop loose. Of course than one of the players came and launched the ball as hard as she could and it came loose for her on the first try. I was a little embarrassed but, most of all, I learned to let the player do it the first time and stay out of the situation :cool:

-Josh

But did you put it back in play giving it to the wrong team and then call something cheap "going the other way". :D

A year or two ago, boys JH game. Small gym with bleachers on all 4 sides and my association evaluator in the stands. I'm trail transitioning to lead on a fast break.

As I run down the sideline looking over my shoulder at the ball handler and the kid trying to catch him, I temporarily forget that I'm running toward the endline with the cheerleaders. The defender grabs a handful of jersey from behind, so an easy call. Just as I hit my whistle, I also plow into a JH cheerleader and we both end up in the front row on top of some very surprised parents.

The worst part for me was, that in the confusion of getting up and making sure the cheerleader is unhurt, I forgot the # of the player committing the foul. Luckily, my partner had my back! :D

Doing a JV girl’s game a few years back. Get to the locker room and I discover I forgot my pants! I am now panicking realizing my house is about 20 minutes away and I would not have enough time to drive home. Therefore I call home and no answer but I leave a desperate message on the machine to call me back. (Can you image what the wife thought when she heard this one?) Well I tell the AD my situation and I tell her I’ll have to wear what I have on. She said OK because there is nothing else I can do. Back in the locker room my partner shows up and he has extra pants but about 4 inches smaller in the waist. So forget about it. So I wear my charcoal gray flecked pants with cuffs and do the game. My partner tried to reassure me that all will be OK and just go out and have a good game. Well I was a bit self-conscious at first but soon got into the game and it turned out it was the easiest and best game I every did (in my humble opinion) in six years! Go figure!

Since then I triple check my bag for all my items and think back how lucky I was I wasn’t wearing my khaki chinos that day.
Edit/Delete Message

Ahh...so many to choose from, so little time...

First one, I'm at T, watching a competitive matchup on-ball. A1 starts to dribble, and out of the corner of my eye I see B2 move to get into position to double-team. Sure enough, another player runs into B2 knocking them to the floor, I know they didn't maintain legal guarding position, so I blow the whistle and signal a great blocking foul. Except...the player that B2 ran into was their own teammate. (Damn.) Quickly explain to partners and coaches it was an IW, gave the ball back to A, and away we go. Except it took a few plays for my red face to go away (and my partners to stop chuckling).

Another one, I'm fighting a cold, complete with sniffles, runny nose, etc. At one point, I feel a sneeze coming on during a live ball. Don't want to miss anything...hold it back...play coming towards me...trying not to sneeze...ppffftt(<font size=1>tweet</font size>)phfftt. Maybe no one heard that? Nope, the players kinda stop, partners are looking around, finally they all look at me as I'm trying to wipe off my whistle. Yuck.

A couple of of years ago my friend's MS Boys team is scrimming a nearby CYO team at the CYO team's gym. I got a chuckle when one of the home players thought I was a player, as I overheard "One of the [school name] players is here and he has a beard!" :D

Before the scrimmage, the coaches agreed to play man-to-man defense. The home team's assistant coaches and myself served as the officials. At the start of one of the later periods (4th or 5th), the home team goes into a zone defense after the opening throw-in. I eventually whistle them for an illegal defense, only to be told the coaches decided to play zone that period. :o

Here's another one of mine. I was running down the side line on a fast break in a smaaaaalllll gym (Boys JV) looking back over my shoulder, when I steamrolled some kid who just came into the gym with a big bag of popcorn, My partner who was T said all he saw was a big cloud of popcorn and then me going head over heels. That one hurt a little.

2 come to mind.

First was a boys V Tournament doubleheader and I had gotten food poisoning about 3 hours before game time. I was in the bathroom until 2 minutes before tip. Then at halftime until the warning horn, then between games same story, and at halftime of the 2nd game. I carried Immodium with me after that for a while. :) My evaluation said great job under extreme duress!

Other was a V game and I was U1 all ready to chop for the tip when I reached up to put my whistle in my mouth and ... no whistle. Lucky for me the locker room was outside through 2 gates and on the other side of the pool. When I ran back in, everyone gave me a standing O -- thanks to my partner. Since then I have saved double digits of partners heading out of the locker room without their whistles by asking.

WOW!...M&M...those are damn funny!. I spit coffee on my computer screen reading those. Priceless!

Boys 12U game....Administering FTs ...I was the T...I was set in my spot...during the 1st shot, table motioned to ask me something...I walked toward the table to be able to hear them. As we finish up our convo, my P is waiting for me to get set up again and I'm now moving back to my spot but I'm doing the good ol' backpedal...kid on the outside decides he's going to occupy a lane space and his path to the basket intersected my backwards path to my spot and we clipped feet....."Down goes Fraizer!" ...I made a nice butt slide and popped back up real quick hoping nobody would see but...several parents asking me if I was ok was the tell tale sign I'd been made :o

I posted this a few weeks back, but I am STILL hearing about this from people around town.

JV boys game. My wife, kids, and her sister and her husband are there. I'm on the sideline getting ready to hand the ball to a player for a throw-in. All of a sudden I hear, "Daddy, I can blow my whistle like you blow your whistle!" I turn around and my son (just turned 4) is standing there with this little train that he has that is actually a whistle; sh*t eating grin on his face. All the players are standing there dumbfounded and the crowd busts up laughing. My brother in law retrieves my son and I look at the players and all I can think to say is, "Don't worry, he's my kid." We all get a chuckle and go on with the game.

All I could think after that was "Damn, I'm glad it wasn't during a live ball.........."

I'm R, on opening tip white gains possesion and point guard pulls ball back in their front court to set play up. Loud tweet as I signal over and back, point to spot and head south, pleased that my first call was a good, sharp, clear cut one.

But wait, I'm looking at volleyball court markings which are 6-7 feet inside division line..........oops.

Fast forward a few years,after National Anthem, partner asks what's on the seat of my pants and hopes it's not what it looks like. Apparently I sat on some chocolate in locker room. Quick visit back to locker room, scrub it off, and now it looks like I wet my pants.

I love this game.

It's Tough To Officiate Without A Whistle ...
 

Same thing for me, no whistle for a boys varsity game, on a Friday night, in a packed gym. Of course, it took several minutes for me to find the site director to unlock the dressing room.

Hence why we are always told NOT to backpedal - lesson learned the hard way, huh Colt?

I feel for ya here! I seem to get "keyed up" for my bigger games and keep a bottle of Pepto in a drawer at my office, at home in the medicine cabinet, and in my bag just in case I need to take a swig.....or ten! :eek: Man, I hope I get over this!

Funny story on a partner working a holiday tourney at a small Christian school in Hawaii a few years back. Partner was a "couple" pounds overweight and late in the first half he split his pants from zipper to back. Unfortunately he was wearing white underwear...dude was visible from satellites orbiting the earth. In the dressing room at halftime, another official from our association who happened to teach at the school came in laughing, not so much at my poor partner's bad luck, but at the the reaction of the kids on the bench she was sitting near. She heard the kids say, in standard local pidgen, "Hey look, ref gotta puka [hole] in his akole [butt]". I still laugh everytime I see that unfortunate partner.