Officiating-The Third Team

They say it's a thankless job, but I'm not sure if I agree with that.

Just started officiating my season for high school football for the 2008 season in the state of Ohio. Start my college football season next Saturday. Thought I would share things from an officials perspective and talk about the season as it goes a long.

This past Friday's game was a dominant performance defensively by the host school with nothing out the ordinary happening.

For those who may read this that aren't officials or those who want to move up to officiating Friday nights, here is a rundown on how Friday football goes for our crew.

Kickoff is at 7:30pm. We like to arrive at the school and be in the locker room by 6:00pm. I say we as in our crew. We do arrive separately but it is the same five guys on the crew for most of the year. When we first arrive there is some personal talk amongst us and then we start to talk about the game at hand, new rules, rules in general, and any unique situations that maybe our co-referees might have had in one of their games that they may have shared with us. Usually start getting dressed near the end of this conversation.
At 7pm we it the field and meet the coaches. Talk with each head coach separately for a few minutes and then we take the captains at midfield for the coin toss at 7:10p. Kickoff is at 7:30pm sharp.
We had a pretty clean game played this past Friday night with some serious hard hits. Game was over about 10p. Once the game is over we are off the field and back in the locker room. As stated pretty clean game played by both teams so we briefly talk about the game as we get cleaned up and head over to a restaurant to eat. We watch the highlights of the local high school football games while eating. Week 2 of the season in the books!