Maybe I shouldn't play...

[La Rikardo]

I don't play a ton of basketball and I'm not particularly athletic, so my friends and I put together a team to play in the intramural league (NFHS rules, or so they tell me) at our university. I'm a pretty even-keeled person. I don't get frustrated easily, which is why officiating suits me well. I do often get frustrated when I'm playing sports, though. So when the other team got their third or fourth breakaway in the first eight minutes of our game today, I was a bit frustrated and gave the kid a solid push to the back to prevent the basket. I fully expected the official to come up with an intentional foul, but instead they decided to call a technical foul. Technical fouls in this league require us to play a man down for two minutes. Not only that, but they gave two free throws for the shooting foul plus two more free throws for the technical foul. Then they awarded the ball to our opponents on the baseline where the foul was committed rather than the division line. Yeah, I know they're recreational officials getting paid minimum wage and I probably shouldn't expect anything different, but if I had known that they were going to call a technical foul for live-ball contact, I would never have done it. Oh well. Maybe I should just stick to officiating.