I got to work with Juulie

[Mark Padgett]

Originally posted by Mark Dexter

Juulie, feel free to tell us why you really left!

Gee, maybe it was my breath? Seriously, as I said, we were short of refs because two of them didn't show (gee - that never happens). Because of this, I wound up working two games with a varsity coach acting as a ref. Please note - emphasis is on the word acting .

Actually, he wasn't real bad, but there were tons of fouls called by him when all the defender got was ball. He also got a couple of "traveling while on the floor" calls wrong, including one where the player never gave up her dribble. And, oh yeah - he called about 4 "kicks" where the defender never moved her foot or leg and the pass just went off her, plus one "kick" where there was a scramble and the ball just hit a players knee as she was falling to the floor.

Yes, I discussed all the calls with him and he seemed pretty receptive. He was filling in because he is one of the sponsors of the league and it was his gym. He keeps some whistles in his office, but no striped shirts, so he wore a gray one. There were no complaints from the coaches, probably because they don't know the rules either.

The best part of the whole day (aside from working with Juulie, of course) was that by the last game of the day, both teams were so tired they asked if we could go to running clock without adding minutes. Did they really expect us to say "no"? Not only that - but at the end of the half, they asked if they could just end it there because of extreme fatigue. It was the fourth game of the day for both teams and it was only 5:00.

I thought about it for about a nanosecond and said, "Well, if you really want to..."

I'll take all the games like that I can get.