I sometimes assigning games. Sometimes I assign a lot of games. I had just finished assigning 200 games for a weekend tournament. ~80 officials, lots of hours on the computer putting people on games, working around other peoples schedules. Plenty of time on the phone making sure that people knew they had games. Worried every time the phone rang that someone was turning back games. All in all not a lot of fun. Assigning officials to games, contrary to what you may think of what you’ve heard is really not all that much fun. But, there’s most always a but, the tourny or just the games them selves are worth it. I was looking forward to working with, hanging out with, the ~80 officials I had assigned to the tourny.

Problem was that we had 6th wettest April ever and I think it fell mostly in the last 2 weeks. The fields were like sponges sitting in the lack of sun not drying out. At 10:30am, 31 hours before the first games was to kick off we were told that we could not use the fields. I was pretty sure when I was told, that it was a joke. I even asked, “Are you joking?”. No joke, no tournament. After a few well chosen words, I told my son that he didn’t have any games for the weekend. He was a little pissed at that. I then got on the computer and sent out an email to all the officials about the change in their weekend. Phoned a number of them that I thought might not see the email. Thought about the timing, I was putting together a shopping list of food to buy for the weekend. That was $400 worth; saved that for the club. Somewhat depressed I went about my day, wondering what I was going to do with my free weekend. When it did arrive I was waiting for a call that it was all a joke and where were all the officials. The call never came, thank God(s). As it turned out I learned over the weekend that a simple screw can raise a roof on a garage. So I got that going for me.