I was supposed to officiate a girls basketball tournament (9th grade) at 9 AM this morning. I accepted the games knowing full well I was coming back from San Diego. Alas, sleeping late last night did not help. While I had my alarm set properly, I slept right through it. I woke up at 9 AM and thought "CRAP!".
I got myself ready in 5 minutes and went out the door. My partner had held up the game a bit but couldn't wait forever. So I showed up at 9:20 AM or so with about 3 minutes left in the 1st quarter of the first game.
If you've ever been LATE to anything, you know it's not a great feeling. Fortunately, I eased my way into the first game and the rest of the games also went fairly well.
Some random thoughts about the day though:
1.
Waking up and jumping right into the game 20 minutes later may have been helped. I hadn't officiated anything about 8th grade in a while. While the games today weren't super competitive, it was an upgrade in competitive level versus some of the youth basketball I had been working in the past few months.
I felt I was pretty sharp and mechanics were fairly strong. My calls were pretty good and I felt comfortable out there. I had some hiccups early as I wasn't completely awake but those weren't a big deal. I was went with the flow and things went alright (with the exception of below).
2.
In the second game, I had to give a technical to a team due to the assistant coach constantly yapping. The assistant coach had complained a bit throughout the game. After one play, I ran over to the head coach and politely asked her to calm her assistant coach down. Of course, as I am talking to the head coach, the assistant coach made another snide comment. I just issued the technical at that point.
Though I wasn't paying 100% attention during a time out later, the assistant coach may have did a bit of a stare down. To be honest, I didn't pay attention and ignore the assistant coach.
In discussing the situation with a college official later on in the day, she said I could have gave the assistant coach another technical for doing the stare down.
3.
In talking to the same college official, I mentioned a couple of other things that happened. Mainly, it involved a situation during a youth game where a player committed an offense foul and then swung an elbow at the defender (did not connect). I issued a technical for the elbow and did not eject the player. Alas, later on the player swung her elbows again later in the game (I believe with the ball) and we called an offensive foul.
This is definitely something I need some clarity on and figure out if I did the correct thing. My partner that night said we were right. I will still double check the rule book.
All in all, the day started oddly but ended well!