Tough Volleyball Officiating Day

Been a while since I posted but that's because I haven't been super active.  In fact, I was supposed to officiate a basketball tournament a week ago.  However, due to a hand fracture, i was given a splint and instructed to not do any heavy physical activity.  Thus I had to cancel out of the tournament a few days before which sucked.  Since my injury I haven't done a lot of exercise except for walking.

I did get a check up a week later with the orthopedic surgeon.  The surgeon said I was lucky my injury was relatively minor and would heal in time without surgery.  He told me to drop the splint BUT I still could not play sports.  I could do cardio workout but I still have not done so.

What I did do was officiate some volleyball.  Volleyball doesn't exert a lot of effort and all I have to do is avoid flying volleyballs to my hand.

However, this past Saturday was a bit of a tough day.  Thanks to the BART strike, I was rushing around on Friday.  I had to rush home from work, get my car and get out to officiate.  It didn't help the week was a little long so I was knocked out after officiating a couple of games on Friday.  I fell asleep for a few hours, woke up, took a shower and went back to bed.

Alas, I OVERSLEPT a bit on Saturday and was late to my first game at 9 AM.  Fortunately, the gym director took care of the first game and I worked the last two games at 10 AM / 11 AM.  The two games were pretty good considering some of these youth volleyball games can be yawners at times.

There were a few plays in both games that I had to deal with.  One involved a coach was a little loud and that bled over to the another team while serving.  I had warn him before he finally understood to keep quiet.   If I recalled correctly, there were a couple of close plays where girls positioned themselves to hit balls that were out of bounds.  I believe one of them did hit a girl.  The other play was a tough one.  It was one my side of the court but opposite the net where the line judge was located.  I quickly looked over and saw the girl running and the ball dropped.  The girl's back was too me and the ball dropped IN FRONT of the girl.

I knew I had to make a snap decision and I called the BALL OUT and said there was no touch.  In looking back, I may have down things a little differently.  I could have asked the line judge on that side of the court to see if they had seen the play.  Or I could have called for a replay.  I only mention this as a coach questioned my call.  My answer to her was "there was no touch before the ball hit the ground".

That was a tough play but I find volleyball an interesting sport.  Basketball may be more exciting but when volleyball is played between two relatively equal teams, volleyball officials can have a lot of work to do.