Craziest/Embarrassing Moments

[JRutledge]

Story one:

I used to wear earrings and have both of my ears pierced. I believe it was the year I started officiating and I was doing a 6th grade girls game and we had the pregame meeting with the players. I go on telling them to remove their earrings and other jewelry as I was the Referee. Well all of this I was wearing too loop earrings in my ear and I did not know it. My partner who was a very good friend of mine wanted to see when I would notice I had them in my ear. It was the running joke for the next few hours and was very embarrassing as he had no idea I would give the Jewelry speech.

Story two:

One more quick story. I called a timeout for the team on defense with less than a minute to go in a game this past year. It was so loud in the gym I "thought" I heard a coach ask for timeout, but obviously heard it from the wrong bench. I happened to be the "timeout official" that day as every timeout I happened to be in front of the bench. I think I called every timeout in this close game that night. Well I just flinched and called a timeout. The place went dead silent and all I could think of is the Southwest Airlines commercial.

Oh, it gets worse. The team with the ball was either up by one or the game was tied. So we put the ball back in play and low and behold the team who had the ball and was the visiting team throws the ball directly to the opponents for an easy lay up to take the lead. That just had to happen to me did it not? The visiting team and the team who I stopped the clock now lost the game (even with some other controversy which I was not involved in), but clearly lost because of this play. I wanted to hide in a hole and go away. I have never been so embarrassed by a play in my somewhat long career. And the entire situation was in the paper with my name listed. I do not think that will happen again to me. I am not giving any more timeouts. LOL!!!

Peace