Well, it’s November 26, and it’s snowing. My daughter is on her way back to college in Kansas and I figured I’d write some thoughts to keep me from worrying about her getting home safe. Her boyfriend is driving and she’s occupying her preferred position as “passenger princess.”

This is Year 37 of HS officiating for me. What started out in 1987 as something to do to make a little beer money in college still continues today. Except now I’m 54 years old and my days of working 10 youth hoops games on the weekend are long over.

Football season was great. Our crew worked through the regular season with some great games and some games that weren’t as great. Then we worked 3 postseason games, including a state semifinal. With our last game being November 10, I was thankful I didn’t have a basketball game until November 21 (the season started November 14). We did have a crew member leave us this season – he let us know in the summer and we’re lucky enough to be able to replace him with someone with experience officiating in Texas who has moved back to the area.

3 basketball games in and I still see why hoops is my first and best love. So many decisions to make in a very short period of time. Anyone who sits in the stands and yells and thinks it’s easy should’ve worked our game yesterday — both teams were high level girls teams, and they both played really aggressive defense. The challenge in games like this is being able to call the plays where the opponent is put at a disadvantage and, except for a few automatics, contact does not necessarily equal a foul.

Yesterday I absolutely kicked the shit out of a call — a ball-handler was dribbling around the 3-point arc from the trail official’s position into my area of the floor (the center). Big collision, and I called a blocking foul as I didn’t have the defender legal. What I didn’t see and everyone on the other side of the floor saw was the dribbler leading and pushing off with the arm. It’s just a reminder that sometimes you don’t see all of the play and it would’ve been better for me to put a fist in the air, look at my partner (who also had a fist in the air) and he could’ve taken it and made the correct call.

I am sure I’ve missed calls where I didn’t realize I missed them, but in many cases we make a call and would like to be able to take it back and have a do-over. Sadly, things don’t work that way. While I could attempt to overrule myself in the moment, it would really hurt crew credibility in the long run – and once I gave a preliminary signal of a block, we were putting it in the book.

My knees feel good after 3 games this past week, although they usually do this time of the season. The real test will be how they feel in January, February, and March. I do have a consult with a surgeon in January – it’s time I put a strategy in place for replacing these knees OR scaling back even further. My 39 games this season is about the same I worked the last 2 years, although last season I worked 6 postseason games on top of the 36-39 regular season games I worked. I didn’t have any problems during games, but I would be in a world of pain the next morning, especially after leaving it all on the Kohl Center floor. I gimped around for a few days of our post-hoops vacation.

It’s another year now and the situation with officiating shortages hasn’t really changed much. In general, we keep adding more games and have fewer qualified officials to work those games. It used to be an official would work at the lower levels for 5-7 years before being ready for a varsity contest. Now many of those officials are working varsity games in Year 2….some in Year 1. I have no issue with assigning newer officials to games, but it’s always best if you have an experienced person on the floor in case a game goes sideways. Even after 37 years, I know that things can go sideways for me – I am not arrogant enough to think I’m something special – I just have about 1000 games of varsity experience to fall back on and have experienced a lot in those games.

I always start blogging with good intentions, but frankly, I have little time – I work a full-time job for a tech company managing a sales support team, I am a conference commissioner, and I officiate. The rest of my week, I just want some down time. My goal this season is to work no more than 3 games a week during the hoops season. I think I’ll succeed until January, but maybe this will give me more juice as the season winds down and we enter the postseason.

No earth-shaking topics this week, but I’ll come back next Sunday, which is the day where I have more time, and start talking about those things on my mind around officiating, assigning, and the world of HS sports.