1.05.2008

Out Of Pocket


I'm out of pocket most of today as I'm up before dawn to help referee the above fund raising activity. Gotta keep those cops in line.

Edit: Observations . . .

- It lasted from 8 a.m. until 3 p.m. (Non-stop with no lunch break. Kill me.)
- The tournament was made up of 4 teams with only one being comprised of cops (and only partially at that.)
- It was more of an all-star game of Wise County high school players over the last 10 years.
- And some of those guys were great.
- How's this for crazy. The four teams played a round robin (each team plays the other.) And they used that to determine the 1 through 4 seeding for the championship tournament. So the final two teams played five games (of 40 minutes in duration.)
- The defenses and offenses were very sophisticated (all because of the creation of 7 on 7 summer play for high schoolers. Whatever happened to "go about 10 yards and cut across" or "just get open"?)
- I screwed up a couple of calls. Officiating is hard.
- I told my friends/officials that the key was to make any call "quickly and forcefully." Hey, act like you are a 100% convinced and you'll convince others. They looked at me like I was nuts.
- Former Decatur high school star Cheyenne Redwine broke his arm. I didn't go look at it after a group huddle around him and yelled, "Oh, my god!" The last I saw of him he was being treated by EMTs.
- After the game resumed, one of his Decatur teammates yelled, "Let's win this one for him!" A quick response from another teammate was, "Dude, he's not dead." Funny. Very funny.
- I blew a whistle too quickly on a play which prompted some guy to yell at me. Loudly. I said, "It's an inadvertent whistle. Get off my back." Another player came up to me and said, "Don't worry about that *&^%&, he's from Bridgeport any way . . . [insert awkward pause] . . . uh, are you from Bridgeport?"
- By the way, cussing was a big player. It was F Bomb Central.
- The championship game came down to both teams firing passes into the end zone in the final couple of minutes. I was the back judge with the primary responsibility of ruling on interference and catch/drop. That was not fun.
- The final play came with two seconds left with the offense spending a very long time in the huddle. One lady on the sideline yelled, "There are only two seconds left! How much time do you need to come up with a play?" Maybe the most confusing yell ever.
- Most shocking comment I heard from a fan: "At least [our star player] has a college degree. [The other team's star] was just picked up off the street."