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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."
