This past Sunday, I worked a girl's varsity spring league game. My partner is a Buddist, I am Jewish and the game was between Valley Catholic and Westside Christian.

As I said - only in America.

BTW - earlier in the day, I had a JV boy's game. One coach (white team) is a former ref partner of mine from an association of which I used to be a member, the other coach (blue team) is one of the refs in my rec league and his oldest son, who plays on the team, also refs for me in my league. It was a real kick having two coaches who joked with me the entire game. At the beginning, the kid who is one of my refs came out with his dad's old HS jersey on. It said "Gaels" on the front. I looked at it and said "Girls?". He said "No, it's Gaels." I said that Gail was a girls name. He said it was "Gaels, like in Gaelic." I said "garlic?" He gave up at that point, shook his head and said, "Please - just ref, Mark".

I dunno, I get this all the time. I call a foul on one end, the coach starts screaming "you have GOT to be joking!!" Then I go down the other end and call a foul, and the other coach grabs his head and mutters "what a joke!"

Funny guys these coaches.

Sounds like just the opposite experience that I had. The worst heat that I received happened this winter. From a fellow referee! CYO game, 7th grade. My biggest mistake was giving him more leeway. (He's a ref, I cut him some slack.) Wrong! It finally got to a timeout, and my partner says, "If you're not going to T him up, I will." I realized that I was putting my partner in a tough situation. I learned my lesson, the hard way. NEVER AGAIN!

Hey, Mark.

I heard the coaches were apathetic atheists - they didn't care what you said, they weren't believing any of it.