Saturday rec follies
 

The rec spring league I'm working is a real challenge. That's because they don't recognize any NF uniform rules (except "no jewelry"). We have kids playing with mis-matched jerseys, white T-shirts under dark jerseys, numbers only on the back, etc. One of the teams I had yesterday had two players with no numbers. They were wearing white and the only tape we had was white adhesive. We did put numbers on their jerseys with the tape but we could barely see them. Another team had a kid with a black T-shirt and we couldn't make him number zero because they had an actual number zero on the team. They also had a double zero. One team had a number 100! In one game we had one team with day-glo orange uniforms and the other team wearing bright purple. Oh yeah - they're not required to tuck their jerseys in, either.

These were all HS level games yesterday and I have lower level today (middle school). Same rules apply (or don't apply, depending on your semantics).

Here's the cool part, though. In one of the games yesterday, a kid hit 12 out of 14 three pointers! His team won 102-52. I was going to check the score sheet to see if his name was Diebler, but I figured that since he missed two of those shots, it couldn't have been.

Down The Middle Lies The Virtue ...
 

Here on the Forum, we often discuss the "foolishness" of NFHS uniform rules, using terms like "Fashion Police". Sounds like what Mark Padgett is describing here is the "Bizzaro World" of NFHS uniform rules, just the opposite of the "real" NFHS rules. Here's a good example of what happens when uniform rules are ignored, or not in place at all. Anarchy reigns, and officiating the game becomes more difficult than it should be.

From this we can draw a lesson from Aristotle's Doctrine of the Mean. Virtue consists of finding an appropriate middle ground between two extremes. As such, each virtue has not one opposite but two. The opposite of courage is both cowardice and rashness, for example. This idea that there are two opposites for every virtue goes against much of the received wisdom of Aristotle's time, including Plato's writings on virtue. It also emphasizes the importance of moderation: we achieve virtue by finding a middle ground, not by aiming for an extreme.

Shut up. :D

And I Didn't Sleep At A Holiday Inn Express Last Night ...
 

I don't know why my username came attached to this post? It was actually posted by mbyron. Must be a vBulletin software problem?

More on Uniforms - Slightly OT
 

My family and I went to the National Mall in DC yesterday where a girls youth lacrosse tournament was going on. We came across one game where both teams were wearing the exact same dark green jerseys. Only difference was one had a white stripe running vertical (under the arm to the shorts) and the other team had yellow. As they ran around.....there was very little way to tell the teams apart.

To exacerbate the issue; they were 95% Caucasian, most girls were the same height/size, and most had had brown or dirty-blond hair pulled back in ponytails. We watched the game for about 15 minutes. While the coaches, players, and parents may have had little problem due to familiarity (assumption on my part), the officials struggled mightily......it was crazy!

That's not correct. I would have pointed out that for Aristotle, virtue is both a mean (of feeling) and an extreme (of goodness). ;)

Well, today was virtually the opposite of yesterday as far as uniforms are concerned. I had two 7th grade boys games and a freshman HS game. All the boys had proper jerseys although there were a few "illegal" numbers. No one was wearing an improper T-shirt under their jersey. They even kept their jerseys tucked in!

Also, the games were much closer than the ones yesterday. The victory margins were four, seven and ten points respectively, with the ten point game coming in the freshman contest. My partner was a buddy who is a HS teacher at the school all three of my kids attended. We've reffed together for about ten years. He's a really nice guy with a good sense of humor. That alone makes it much more enjoyable to work games.

In the HS game, a kid dribbled the ball off his foot OOB. He then bent over, slapped his foot and said, "Bad foot, bad foot" while shaking his finger at it. I think he was the coach's son.

I've started doing my men's rec league runs... so much fun!

Tonight, a team is down 18 points with 5 minutes left in the game. Foul count is them 3, their opponent 4. They call timeout to approach us and tell us how we are making this game personal calling it too tight on them... I had to double take, we had called 3 fouls on them in 15 minutes of play that half... and only 5 in the first 20 minute half. I just wanted to finish up the game and so asked the captain to take care of their players and start to walk away when he starts shouting about how we are setting the game up for them and calling it 1 sided, etc.

Tweet, technical foul. Go to table to report and another player approaches telling us how bad we are and don't know anything about basketball rules. He'd been warned earlier on top of it... tweet, technical foul. ANOTHER teammate of theirs comes up and tells us we wouldn't have technical fouls if we didn't call such weak **** against them...tweet, technical foul. Third time is a charm and they shutup till end of the game.

I don't think I've ever served T for three. Which china do you use?:p

Fling dynasty. :D

Did that show have Jay R Ewing son in it?:D