OT: Working Volleyball

[ASA/NYSSOBLUE]

OK - I am a softball umpire, and have been for almost 25 years . About 10 years ago my ASA assignor started getting after me to work volleyball - : "Ya gotta do volleyball - modified (middle school) volleyball is EASSY" (imagine Arnold Stang) So, after couple of years of this, I went and took the course. The course itself is a nut buster, as NYS goes by the NCAA book, and the clinician is nuts. My second match ever, I was assigned, by myself, and both coaches wanted to start before the required 4:30 start - you have to be there at 4 for warmups. So we started about 4:20 or so - and I was walking out of there after 3 sets....before 5 p! I felt like Willie Sutton after a bank visit! Our fee at that time was about $60 a match, plus an extra half fee for working alone!

Well, eight years later it has gotten nuts: A couple of years ago, to save on bus trips, the local sports authority that schedules and pays us, decided to have the modified teams play each other once a year, with each meeting being a double match. What is crazy is that now I am up to 15-17 of these a year - at $1.20 a trip (move the decimal point )!

While it is easy, the travel here can be a bit much - we cover three counties in SE NYS, the written test is a b***h, even with it being open book; and those double matches sometimes can last a while. But still, I am never. ever looking to move up! The double matches are kind of long though - almost 2 1/2 hours sometimes...

Our local volleyball group is VERY short, as volleyball suffers from the same problem a lot of 'specialty' sports have - there are just not enough people who live and breathe the sport, who are available afternoons.