Scrimmage time
 

I worked a girls scrimmage today. Showed up at the school. 2-person, they're planning on playing 3 games with 24-minute running halves.

I helped find people to work this (they only needed 4 and I was one of the 4). I got there and pretty much had the choice of working the varsity or the JV. Same teams, different courts, same pay.

I decided I wanted to work with the guy who was doing the JVs. Older guy, can't move that well, but a decent person to spend 3 hours with. And this is probably the only JV game I'll work, well, ever unless I fill in on an emergency basis.

Oh. My. God.

For those of you that work JV girls, I salute you. I couldn't do it. Every time dow the floor I could've called a traveling violation. I had to dial my filter way down in order to put any flow into the game. Bodies everywhere. We had no arrow at the table and tonight was proof that an official can memorize the arrow cause I must've had about 50 AP situations in 3 games.

While the coaches were friendly and the kids were nice and fun to be around, I think I'd have to quit if I was ever forced to work ball like this on a regular basis.

Started at 4:30PM, finished at 7:40PM. One more scrimmage. Like always, I feel like I have had enough of scrimmages about one scrimmage before I'm actually done.

1st scrimmage I had this year showed up for freshmen boys scrimmage. No partner showed. Ended up running 3 pt line to 3 pt line trying to call the obvious w/o getting someone hurt. What fun it was.

Thanks for the heads up on the JV girls games. I'm just getting started on my 2nd year and most of my games this year are girls JV games. :)

Amen!
 

I did five, eight-minute quarters tonight with two of the better VG team's locally (IMO). Good flow and tempo. Good P's. Pretty good ball. Enjoyable. Wish they were all like that.

It certainly can be tough at the lower levels - especially when the talent isn't there.

When I was in my second year, I needed to work as many JV girls games as possible. But nobody could look good working them.

We played 6 24-minute running clock halves, BTW.

Welcome back to the sub-varsity club! At least you won't be doing too many (any more?) of them. Right now I'm bouncing around from 7th grade girls (2-man) up to competitive varsity boys (3-man). Your comment about dialing your filter down was comforting to read. While I'm loving the journey the rule enforcement dial-down/up button is definitely getting a workout for me this season.

Interestingly I think this situation will remain the same as our association wants more experienced folks working, at least occasionally, with newer folk. I think the days of varsity-only schedules will not arrive any time soon. While that's a good thing developmentally for all involved I look forward to being proficient enough at 3-man to make the transitions easier.

For us it's even harder -- we have varsity conferences that play good basketball covered 2-person. I work other conferences and about a dozen Juco games 3-person. Ends up being about a 60/40 split for me over the course of a season.

I can pretty seamlessly move between 2-person and 3-person, but every once in a while I'll find myself looking in the paint when the ball swings low on the L's side and have to remind myself, "That's mine - get out there."

Girls varsity aint much better!! Unfortunately I open up the HS season with a girls JV/V doubleheader... thank God thats 2 of my required 5 out of the way early!

Any of you guys can let me know if you want to come out here and work some 3/4 grade girls games for our local kids rec league. They're loads of fun. :)

I worked a GV scrimmage last night - average 6A school. They ran four 10 minute quarters & the girls actually played fairly decently. We didn't see our first held ball until mid-way through the 3rd quarter, and only had a hand full for the whole scrimmage.

So....these were really boys dressed as girls? :D

I've told many non-officials that JV girls is probably where my most difficult games happen. Close second would be JV boys. If an official can handle these games, it's an easy jump to varsity as I see it. I will finally get to know considering I have V games on my schedule this season! Up to now it's only been V scrimmages and summer ball.

Naw Mark, haven't run into that in basketball..... yet. Of course there was that issue along those lines with a cheerleader at one of the PIL schools that caused a big problem a couple years back...:eek:

And now he's the mayor? :rolleyes:

(inside joke for those of us who live in the Portland area - not that there's anything wrong with that)

There is worse than JV Girls. It's called Freshman Girls. I'd rather poke a sharp stick in my eye than work one of those again. Although I had my first game of the season last night. V-Girls. Final was 62-5. Had to do some dialing down myself. Hopefully the season gets better.

Which is worse to work: MS 7th Girls or HS C-Squad/9th girls?