Who said MS games were boring?

[Stat-Man]

Had an away MS girls game last night. This particular opponent has nver truly had an official scorer as their scorer only tracks their team and not the opponent. In past years, either our HC or myself ask to be official scorer in light of that and never have a problem.

This year, things went one step further. Home team didn't even have a scorer or book for the 7th grade game (we play 7th grade first, followed by 8th grade). Ended up having to add players to my game sheets as they entered (no big deal, but still...).

I pointed out the lack of ahome book and scorer to the R and added, "so this mean's I'm official scorer, right?", he made some sort of grunt or otherwise noncommitted acknowledgement. *shrugs*

7th grade game goes on without any major issues. In the 5 minutes bteween the 7th and 8th grade game, I see nobody on the home side of the scorers table again, so I figure the home team has no book or scorer again and remove our team's roster I had over there for the home scorer and figure I've got the official book deisgnation again.

In the 8th grade game, I had the home coach calling all four of her timeouts (league rule: 4 full timeouts per game). I tell the R and he acknowledges it. Fast forward to 37 seconds left in the 5th and final period (another league rule, we play five periods of 4-4-4-6-6 minutes respectively). Home team takes a timeout -- #5 according to my records. I get the R's attention to tell him it's an excessive timeout.

Al of a sudden some lady sitting on the opposite side of the time says the home team only took 3 time outs. I have no idea where she came from, since she wasn't there before the 8th grade game or at the tipoff .
I remind the R that he deisgnated me official scorer to start the day and I've been operating as one ever since and his response was "I don't recall that."

Eventually, he rules that the home book is always official and we have no choice but to go by what Mrs. Last-Second Scorer has (full provisions of NFHS 2-11 notwithstanding).

What a mess. At least it didn't affect the outcome of the game, but it definitely got me even more irritated that this school can't ever seem to field a competent table crew.