The Excitement of Volleyball

Back in late August or early September of 2009, I decided I would officiate some youth volleyball.  There were multiple reasons for this.  One, I had been unemployed for a few months and having something to do would be cool.  Two, as a basketball official for the same organization that runs the volleyball league, I figured it would be easy to break in to work some games as the assignors knew me.  Lastly, it was a pretty  easy and semi-painless way to do something different.  I have been so deeply involved with basketball that it can become stale sometimes.

Fast forward to tonight.  I've had an up and down summer due to various personal things.  I hadn't officiated much basketball over the summer and wasn't sure I wanted to officiate volleyball.  Yet, I got some calls to see if I could work some volleyball games as I had missed the first two weeks.  After thinking about it, I decided I could work a few games here and there.

I got a chance to work my first games of the season and it was some pretty good games out there.  My first game tonight was a 6th grade game.  While the teams were not super skilled, they were pretty solid and the game went three sets with the home team winning.

The second and final game was the best of the night.  It was an 8th grade game and both teams were bumping, setting and spiking quite a bit.  The visiting team took the first set, while the home team took the second set.  In the third set, the visiting team took a seemingly commanding 14-5 lead but the home lead stormed back and pulled off a stunning 16-14 victory.

The interesting thing about tonight was I felt comfortable as I had not officiated a volleyball since last year.  The 6th grade game was fairly easy to officiate as the pace was slow.  But the 8th grade game was tough as there was a lot of net play and balls flying all over the place.

As I mentioned before, volleyball is a nice sport to officiate as it helps my basketball officiating.  The reason is that volleyball requires you to hold the whistle until the play completes.  There are time in basketball when holding your whistle is beneficial.

All in all, I'm glad I jumped back into volleyball.  The games were good and I got to officiate / watch some nice plays.  Maybe in time, I will see if I want to make a jump into high school volleyball.  Volleyball is a pretty good sport to watch / officiate.