Last week, I wrote about my ref experience calling a junior varsity girls game. Little did I know at that time what would be in store for me the rest of the week.
On Wednesday, I did a middle school game that turned to absolute mayhem by the fourth quarter. I was absolutely not prepared to handle a situation of this severity, and although my partner had decades of experience, he didn’t take over the game as much as we needed. The coaches were horrendous, the fans were brutal, and even some of the players were slightly mouthy. At one point, one of the coaches ran onto the court, proclaiming the way we were calling the game was going to get one of his girls hurt. Ironically, two possessions later, one of his girls fell on top of one from the other team, and she was down hurt on the court for a few minutes as the wind was knocked out of her.
That’s the kind of night it was.
The worst part: we didn’t do much about it. Like I said, I was not prepared to handle a situation like this at all, and my partner didn’t take over. A coach running onto the court is an automatic technical, and that thought entered by mind as I realized what was happening. But in all honesty, I was so shocked that this was happening in a middle school game – and my third-ever game as a paid ref – that I froze.
The next night, my partner was much better about asserting himself when I wasn’t capable, and the coaches and fans were not even close to as bad as the day before. But they were still not great, and there were multiple times where I failed to be the authority on the game I needed to be. Toward the end of the game, the home team’s best player was injured as she drove the lane and required a trainer. Fortunately, she was okay, but that meant she had to leave the game until the next dead ball. However, her coach called timeout, which was the only way in which she would be allowed to immediately come back once it restarted.
The opposing coach didn’t like this very much, and he was adamant that she needed to stay out regardless of the timeout. I was pretty sure he was wrong, and my partner was absolutely sure he was wrong. After the game, he complained to both of us about it. He instructed us to check the rule book to see that we were wrong.
I did. We were right. He was wrong.
I’ve lived a lot of years of my life with varying levels of anxiety, and whenever I ref, I experience a roughly two-hour anxiety attack in the hour or so leading up to the game, then during the game itself. The positive experiences I had, though – the scrimmages, the youth game and my first junior varsity game – were starting to help that go down some. But then Wednesday and Thursday happened, and it got worse than ever before.
I did another game Friday, this time another JV girls matchup. My partners were fantastic, and really, the game went pretty well. The coaches were nothing like what I had experienced Wednesday and Thursday, the fans were silent, if existent, and I generally did a decent job all things considered. But my anxiety was excruciating to the point where after the game as I was coming down from all the adrenaline, I had to sit down and drink lots of water because I felt the early stages of a faint oncoming. On all three nights, I felt very depressed and malaise during my drives home and for a few hours getting back.
My experiences this week really did deter me from officiating to a degree. It certainly took away my excitement for games and replaced it with dread and nervousness. Friday night was positive, though, and I need to keep games like that in mind. I have so much room to grow as someone who has never been a ref at any level in any sport at any point in my life. Having to manage and command a game like that is totally foreign to me, and I am very much learning how to do it.
This has by far been the most difficult aspect of officiating for me. The rules and mechanics are not easy, and neither is making calls live in a game with no help from replay or camera angles, not to mention zero reprieve from pressure. But I am absolutely clueless on how to handle coaches, control players and exert authority over the game. Right now, I’m letting the game happen to me, but as the ref, I need to be happening to the game.
I don’t know how I’m going to figure this out other than hopefully it begins to click as I ref more games. I don’t have anything scheduled for a couple weeks as of right now, and I think that’s for the best. What happened this week was very taxing on me mentally and physically, and I need a break to collect myself. I did learn one crucially important thing from this week, though: I will never, ever, ever ref four games in fives days ever again.
