Halfway through my Freshmen year at Mason I decided that it would be nice to have a little spending money. As if I wasn't already busy enough with going to school, and having football workouts three nights a week, and kicking three days a week. So I got a job as an intramural referee. I do basketball in the winter and soccer in the spring. Now I'm an A class "ballin" soccer referee, no one ever really questions my calls and I am not afraid to give out yellow cards. (I went hard on this little sorority girl my freshmen year and gave her a red for slide tackling, which is a no no, but really she was a total jerk to me a few months earlier.) However, basketball is a different story. I never really played basketball growing up and I was just awful at it when I tried to play. Anyways, long story short I was just awful at officiating basketball my freshmen year. It was a terrible learning experience as I tried to learn the rules and everything else. Eventually my boss started assigning me to womens games and B league games (not that they were any easier to ref, in fact I feel that girls mouth off more than guys do.) This eased me into the learning experience a little bit.
The big year was last year, my Sophomore year. By then I knew almost all of the rules, and was doing a really really good job officiating. I was doing so well that for the playoffs they moved me up to ref the frat games. If you don't know Mason intramurals this is like the Major Leagues. Anyways I was assigned a quarterfinal match-up between PIKE B and Sig Ep B. Well this was just awful. I started blowing calls left and right, I had ten frat guys yelling at me, there was a huge crowd of sororitutes, cheering these guys on, and they even started yelling at me. It was bad. At half time, one of the older officials came over to me and told me "it's okay, it's just intramurals, these guys arn't even real athletes. Just do what you want." And with that I turned into a stone cold ref with no emotion. Now my calls weren't exactly much improved, even though I was trying harder. But when someone questioned my call, instead of me attempting to stutter out an explanation, I would turn and walk away. Or my favorite, I would respond in a whisper and they would be like, "What?" and then I would say, "told ya so", and walk away. If they kept arguing I would just T them up. Basically I became a bad ass referee.
This year has had some pretty good moments also. I love giving out technical fouls. I look for any reason to throw one out there. Jewelry is my favorite, no bracelets, earrings, etc are allowed, but sometimes people forget. I've given T's for things as little as a rubberband, and when the kid complained to me my reply was, "sucks that you didn't read the rules." By far my greatest officiating moment came a couple of weeks ago when I called a foul on some kid (trust me it was a good call.) But this kid didn't think so, and kept complaining to me. A few plays later he was suppose to inbound the ball after an out of bounds call. When I went to hand him the ball he was too busy arguing to notice. So I dropped the ball on the ground, and began my 5 second count (You have 5 seconds to inbound a ball.) This kid didn't get the memo and continued to argue with me. Eventually I got to five and blew my whistle and called turnover. Now this really set this kid off. This guy started yelling and yelling, and I started laughing and laughing, then I gave him a tech and he stormed off the court. Basically I'm Ed Hauchulli of intramural basketball.
So on a side note I have been having a killer Spring Break. Let's see my day consists of waking up eating cold pizza. Followed by dropping bombs in my backyard for like an hour. (Roop new long, 56 YARDDSSSSS, chicks dig the long ball) This is followed by picking my little bro up at school, which is then followed by doing some attempted studying which seems to always be ruined by facebook or kicking.com. Then I usually eat dinner, and hang with the rents. Then usually everyone goes to sleep, so I head to the basement and watch stupid romantic comedies on netflix, which make me feel like crap, so I usually go to sleep only to be woken up by my dog at like 7am. So yea, I'm pretty much living the dream.
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