Longest Travel

[Mark Padgett]

The farthest I've ever traveled to work games is from Portland to Seattle. This was about 15 years ago. A guy I used to work kids tournaments for asked me if I would go up there for a weekend and work 4 games on a Saturday and 4 on a Sunday, including the championship game which started at 8:00 pm. There were boys MS teams from Oregon, Idaho and Washington in the tournament and also two teams from Vancouver, BC. He paid me mileage, room and food plus $150 for doing this, which came to almost $20 per game which wasn't bad back then. It was in early December and was kind of a season "kick-off" tourney.

I went and had a lot of fun. It was held at a high school just outside Seattle and I stayed at a pretty nice motel. I was one of three officials who came up from Oregon to work this. The idea was to have a "balance" of officials representing the various areas of participation.

I don't remember much else about it except that the Canadian team that I had in one of my games had quite a few rules questions. Also, I remember the fans being really well behaved.

The following year, I worked two tournaments for him on the Oregon coast. I miss those days.