Opinions and thoughts

[9redskin4]

In the area where I work we see the same teams, coaches, fans, game management, etc. several times a year. It comes to a point where you almost know most people on a personal level, which has it's pros and cons. Anyway, I am working a GV tournament where I am officiating team green. This is the 2nd time I have worked team green in as many days, and I have worked 5 or 6 of their games at this point in the season. I know that they have some fans that can become pretty rude if they get going, so as this game progresses, I start to hear it from some of these regular whiners. Beginning the 4th quarter a team green fan makes some pretty outrageous comments directed towards me and I have had enough. I notice that these comments came from a fan that I do not consider a regular whiner. At the next dead ball I point to him and ask him to leave. He acts quite shocked, as they all do, but leaves anyway.

At the end of the game I am "debriefing" with my partner and we are discussing the ejection. For some reason I begin to question whether I threw the right guy out. In asking my partner, he confirms my doubt and says the comments were coming from one of the regular whiners.

Fast forward three weeks and I am standing on team green's home court ready to do a conference rival regular season game. The situation described above has bothered me since it happened. As we are standing there for pregame warmups, I see the wife of the guy I ejected coming into the gym. My immediate thought was that I should find a moment before the game and apologize to him and tell him that I had ejected the wrong guy. When I don't see him immediately with his wife, I continue to keep an eye out for him so I can carry out my apology. As game time nears, he is still not around and my thoughts go from apology to "hell no, whether I got the right guy or not, it is water under the bridge". Soon the game begins, he shows up, and I officiate the game with out incident and leave the gym wondering if I did the right thing or if at some point, I need to apologize to him for my error.

Whatya think?