Officiating Other Sports??

[coach41]

Rufus,

I would have never expected to meet a former fencing official in basketball officiating forum!

I was a fencer in high school for three years (though one year was cut short due to injury). I was never all that good though I made it to our "All-City" tournament in my junior year. I was eliminated in the first round but hung tough against one of the top fencers in our league. That garnered me the "Most Improved Player" award from my coach. My coach was actually a former Olympic champion fencer. One of my teammates was Olga Chernyak who got a scholarship to fencing power Penn State and was a Division I individual champion her sophomore year.

Check out my team in my senior year:

http://www.angelfire.com/ca2/smcoach...ths-fen_92.jpg

My former coach asked me officiate fencing a few years back but the matches were in the afternoon when I was still working.

Thanks to you, I remember a lot of how the officials handled our matches back in high school. When I think back to it, it was pretty interesting that the matches were stopped by the official to figure out the scoring.

Imagine if this were applied to basketball:

Whistle blow and players stop

Officials announces to all players:

Player drove baseline
Defender stepped in and clipped offensive player on hip
Therefore the call is a BLOCK!

Thanks for the memories of my high school days. I can't remember any matches that stood out but those were some interesting days!