Interesting and weird

[sportswriter]

Originally posted by Poosh
I was just wanting to see what you guys had for the weirdest or unusual thing that has happened to you during a game. It could be anything weird wild funny. Something not ordinary. As a first timer just wanting to hear some of the war stories of crazy things that you guys have ran into that wasn't usual. You get the point. So fire a way. I bet you got to have some good ones!

My fave, I think, took place on the first scrimmage at an atom (age 10-11) game a few years back. I was the white cap of a four-ref crew. At that age, the basic plays are power right, power left, dive right, dive left, and the occasional sweep right, sweep left. That's about as exciting as it gets.

Save this game. First down, handoff to running back. The outside edges of the offensive line are pushed back, and there's basiclaly a nice, round "U", into which the running back goes - and fumbles the ball as he dives through, and is squished like a day-old sandwich.

At this moment, there's two people in the entire area that know the ball is loose. The kid on the ground five yards upfield, and me. I move in so I can see who gets the loose ball.

At that moment, for some reason, everybody stops, I guess not realizing the ball is loose. I'm sitting there praying that none of my other stripes blows an inadvertant, when I see one of the offence bend down to pick up the ball.

Next, he tries to hand it to me, thinking the play is over.

I start to backpedal, and this kid is now wondering why I'm not taking the ball. So he takes one, then two steps towards me, all the while holding the ball in his outstretched hand.

One tick, two ticks, (thankyoufornotblowingtheinadvertandwhistle) and two defenders suddenly clue into the fact that there's been no whistle. They charge the kid with the ball, and the first one there swipes at the ball, which goes onto the ground.

Stunned former ball carrier is still standing there, looking at me as if he wants me to do something about the impolite cretins that have interfered with his gracious attempt to hand me the ball - save that I'm ignoring him completely as I watch the bounding pigskin bounce all over hell and half acre. After a second or so, the second kid dives on ball, and I blow the whistle.

Coaches go ballistic, one with glee, the other with unpleasantries on his tongue and murder on his mind. So, the game clock shows about 28 seconds gone, and I've already got a major bruhaha to explain.

But man, that was funny.

[Edited by sportswriter on Jan 26th, 2003 at 01:30 PM]