Friday, February 7, 2014

Quality Not Quantity

The 2013-2014 high school basketball season has been a bit of a wash for me.  Due to some personal things, I chose not to officiate much this season.  However, I was surprised that I even got to do the few games I worked.  I worked a few JV games and one varsity girls game about 3 weeks ago.  The odd thing is that while the number of games have been low, all of them have been fairly competitive.

Tonight, I got a chance to work yet another fairly competitive game.  This was a fortuitous one.  My partner from a few weeks ago had to give up her games and she decided to email me first before anyone else.  From the game times she told me about, I figured the game were varsity games and confirmed it.

I told the other officials I would take the games if the assignor was ok with it.  After all, I had not worked much this season and I was walking to a very competitive situation.  Fortunately, the assignor was agreeable and I got to work tonight.

I worked with a good partner and the final score was 40-36.  Overall, I think my partner and I were on the same page.  There was not much controversy except for a missed foul where my partner and I crossed signals in our coverage.  I thought my partner was following a play as the trail official so I turned to the key to watch the post.  Alas, my partner was expecting me to watch the play and a girl got hit and fell.    I had zero visibility to what happened.  My partner and I talked afterwards about this.  He saw the play but he was on the other side of court and decided to pass.  The coach from one of the teams was upset but he got over it fairly quick.

Overall, it was a fun night.  The game was intense and the crowd was into it a bit.  But it wasn't a difficult game to officiate. It was great to get into the action again.  I actually have two more games which people gave away to work which I am looking forward to!