"Play with sportsmanship"

[Corndog89]

This weekend I worked Friday night and Saturday morning games at a JV tournament in beautiful downtown Pahrump, NV and experienced a first in my 10 years of officiating. My first game early Saturday morning involved the Tonopah HS girls team whom I had officiated the night before. So at the start of our captain's pre-game meeting I jokingly said to the Tonopah captains, "We just did this last night and I'm sure you remember what I said, so you give the pre-game. #11 immediately said "Play with sportsmanship". I was stunned and responded "Holy cow! You were listening and got it exactly right!" She just looked at me like, "Duh".

The next game involved a boys team that I had the night before as well, so I gave their captains the same challenge...sadly their deer-in-the-headlights stare indicated that they were not #11 level listeners.

Tonopah's nickname is the Muckers, so I asked #11 (she became my go-to player after that pre-game) what a Mucker is. Again she came through...a mucker in a miner. Oh. Apparently there's a lot of mucking going on in the Tonopah area.

Finally, the line of the weekend. The table crew was Jim on the clock and Jane keeping the book, with all names changed to protect the innocent in the highly unlikely case they read this forum. As my partner and I walked up to the table at the end of the first game, Jim asked his just-arriving replacement the following directly quoted question: "Do you want to do the clock or the lovely Jane?" I asked my partner did he just hear what I just heard, and he nodded yes. Fortunately, I don't think the lovely Jane overheard this poorly, and hopefully unintentionally, phrased query.

Yep, fast times at Pahrump High.