COLUMN: My day in the lion’s den
Pop quiz: What does my experience of refereeing church basketball Saturday have to do with catching the chicken pox? They are both things that I only plan on experiencing once in my life.
Working on only five hours of sleep, I showed up bright and early at 7 a.m. to the church where they gave me a zebra shirt, a whistle and threw me into the den of lions. If you have ever seen the Discovery Channel, you know what happens to a zebra in the midst of lions.
And no, my experience in the lion’s den was not quite as fortunate as Daniel’s.
From the very beginning I could see we had a problem. Picture Stevie Wonder officiating a Bobby Knight coached game. Admittedly my lack of experience in the area was quite evident.
It might not have been so bad if this wasn’t such an important game. Unfortunately, I was in a pressure cooker that even NBA refs couldn’t ever imagine: I was calling a church basketball playoff game.
The game didn’t start out so bad. For the first 10 minutes or so I just tried to stay out of people’s way and let the little ticky-tack stuff slide. One NBA wannabe gave me a few dirty looks, accompanied by some sounds that resembled a kindergartner practicing his consonants (“kuh!”, “tuh!”, “chuh!”, “puh!”), but besides that I had very few problems in the first half.
Things started to heat up in the second half. On an obvious foul, I made the call a little bit late. The lions weren’t too happy at the delayed call.
The call may have come a tad late, but even Stevie Wonder could’ve heard the Zsa Zsa Gabor slap this guy gave the shooter.
After my late call, Zsa Zsa said, “Let me offer you some advice: Make the calls when they happen.”
Thanks Zsa Zsa. It’s relieving to know someone was looking out for my well being at 7 a.m.
Accompanied with Zsa Zsa’s words of wisdom came more disgusted looks and noises from consonant boy – “guh!”, “kuh!”, “chuh!”.
There was one more slow whistle I made on a traveling call. This one favored Zsa Zsa and consonant boy’s team, but still they weren’t satisfied. One of them told me to “be more decisive.”
The night before, I received a call asking if I would ref the early game. If I had known I would have people arguing with me because of calls I made to help their team I would have slept in. I felt like I was reffing a Dallas Mavericks game under the watchful eye of Mark Cuban.
In the end, I blew a call and of course my lion friends weren’t pleased.
Afterwards I had my own game to play. As I was warming up I saw them on the sidelines scowling at me and whispering what I assumed to be the final details in my death plot.
As my game started, my bad morning became even worse. Guarding me was a crazy, sweaty, screaming middle-aged man who would sprint up to me screaming and frothing at the mouth every time I touched the ball. It felt like a rabid dog was guarding me.
As my game was drawing to a close, Old Yeller made a drive for the hoop. As he went up, I jumped up and got all ball, but the ref called a foul on me anyway. I wanted to tell the ref he was blind, but then I remembered my zebra experience, so I told him “nice call,” and handed him the ball.
What a day. Since then I have heard the lions were making an appeal to church officials in Salt Lake City trying to get me fired. Too late. I quit.
Clark Jessop is a sophomore majoringin broadcast journalism.He can be reached atclarkjessop@cc.usu.edu