Impartial_Observer

The Andy Griffith Show. And no one will beat me at TAGS trivia. Did you realize Goober and Gomer while often reference by each other never appeared in the same show?

There isn’t a situation that comes up in life that isn’t covered by an episode of TAGS.

As an official contrary to popular belief you really don’t care who wins or loses. After 40 plus years even watching your hometown team you kinda become detached. I have gotten to the point where I don’t even watch a lot of Football anymore, I tended to officiate from my chair, I’m counting players, checking alignments, etc., in stead of just watching. This fall Seymour’s youth league was brought back into the school system. We developed a training system for Seymour players who we’re interested in officiating the youth league games. The key to it all was getting the players paid for officiating. We had great support from the administration. Honestly I was hoping to get 2-3 guys, I was somewhat amazed at our turnout. Ended up with 9 guys who worked the whole season. I white hatted all games and we used four man crews for every game. I had a blast getting to know these young men, and doing the training. We worked the games and they grew by leaps and bounds as young officials. I’ve long said sports are about relationships, and the key takeaway for me is in building relationships with these young men, I have become a fan again. I take care of the officials at Seymour home games and during the games I watch just like everyone else, and I’m rooting for them. It’s been incredibly positive for me. And hopefully I’ve made some small impact on these young men as well. With all that being said I’m going to believe in my guys and I’m taking Seymour over BHSS Friday night, I believe in them and I think they’re going to get it done. Go Owls!

No clue.

No clue, I have no affiliation with Jasper HS.

Not sure how I feel about this. I know Jasper will do things right, but man a lot of history there. Some fond memories there, always loved Coach Brewer stopping in the locker room before the game working us lol.

Coach Mullins has done a nice job of building the program basically from scratch. I have respect for what he’s doing there. That being said I’m not sure the program is at a point where it can compete at HH’s level. Best of luck to both teams.

And if you follow the FB football pages, those are the idiots that are running those programs. Nothing good will come from it. I am a HUGE proponent on educational based sports. Obviously it’s been a huge part of my life but more importantly they played a huge role in who I became. The lessons learned, the work ethic, being part of something bigger than yourself, etc. My daughter could play Softball a little bit. We did the travel thing. It’s a necessary evil if college is the goal. With that being said we had hard and fast rules about when she could play. She was a good enough athlete she could contribute to the BB team without doing all the summer crap. When DeVinney was at Seymour she was awesome to work with. She just asked for one weekend in the Summer for her team camp and would work around her schedule. That being said SB season started after BB season was over and went thru nationals. We played in ASA nationals so week 4 of the IHSAA calendar. She did not doing anything SB related until after Labor Day and picked it up again until the BB practice started. Fall is a HUGE recruiting time for SB. One BB practice started no SB until about the first of Feb, last couple weeks of BB season we would start doing tee work a couple of times a week until BB was over. When ever she took time off it took her about a month to get her bat sharp again. As a parent you walk a very fine line know when to push and when to back off. My daughter was very driven, college SB was her goal from the time she was about 7. She had a great college experience and had a pretty good career at Marian University. But most importantly she parlayed that into a career at Cummins. The biggest problem I see with club sports today is it is so watered down, kids are playing sports year round with no breaks, specializing, and it basically leads to burnout, repetitive stress type injuries, etc. Oh and unrealistic expectations. BB for her was an escape. She could just play and have fun. I supervise some travel SB on the weekends, I see kids who are going to struggle to make their HS team and they think college coaches are going to walking around handing out scholarships at any moment. And FWIW, anyone that tells you their kid is getting a full ride is lying, unless they play BB or VB.

Contingency plans are above my pay grade. However it’s not hard to see education based sports go away. We already see kids skipping HS sports for club sports. Football was always the anomaly in that equation but we’re starting to see a fair amount of club football, which in my opinion is not conducive to the health of the game or the health of the players playing the game. Go run track or play baseball in the spring. Athletes should be athleting.

No. I can give you all the BS criteria they tell us but the bottom line is Robert will do whatever he pleases and you will like it. I can tell you a crew in southern Indiana who in my opinion is an outstanding crew that have had the rating and eligibility to work the finals for the last four years and have been snubbed every year. Including being the #1 rated crew in the state one of those four years. Multiple state finals worked in multiple sports for the crew members. White hat has worked the finals in Football, Baseball, and Basketball. This is beginning to be a bone of contention among officials, we have a system in place but North Meridian just does whatever they please. You reach a point in your officiating career where you just say eff it, I got better things to do every Friday night. I retired from Friday nights and have been doing mostly MS and a few JV/Frosh games and I had a ball just working the games. No politics, no jumping thru all the BS hoops they force us to jump thru. I haven’t applied for the tournament in Softball since 2019 and we (our crew) opted to call it a day last February and I even had more fun during SB season this year. I was asked by Seymour’s athletic department to take care of the officials for their home games this year and I enjoyed it. Still a little fellowship with “the guys” and no responsibility. For me it’s always been more about being out with “my guys” on a Friday night than being an official. You’re a team, you’re involved in something bigger than you. Does that make any sense? Sorry for the rambling response I hope I’ve answered your question. Lastly I’ll say, you have no idea how many guys have asked me….”do you miss it?” And the answer is an emphatic no. I think we have a real problem coming in the not too distant future with football officials.

About the only time we could conceivably see crews working two games would be the first round. And we’re getting closer. I believe there were 129 crews apply this year for 124 first round games. The bigger issue with games being moved to Saturday is a lot of guys have college/NFL responsibilities. In that case, if there’s a conflict, they will just switch the crew to a Friday game and move that crew to Saturday. I realize the NFL isn’t playing on Saturday yet, but guys will have to be in town for meetings, film, pregame, etc.

Serious question, how will Harris juggle all these czar responsibilities she’s been tasked with? I mean she’s only one person.

Gotcha, I was including Bloomington HS as well. But from my recollection that is correct. Looks like it was more in the late 80’s when it got iffy. FWIW, local paper had the two teams playing only three times, in the article about last years game.

I’m kind of surprised they’ve only played 18 times. Back in my day we played them every year. I think there was a time in mid 90’s when the SCC was in its death throes they didn’t play every year.

Uhhhhh, don’t both teams have another game this week?

Looking at the South game a couple of weeks ago thru a coach’s eyes tough game. Both had to figure there’s a reasonable chance they’re going to be seeing each other again in three weeks. I don’t think there’s any argument from anyone that South has a better team. But if I’m looking at it from Seymour’s standpoint point I gotta think I can beat them once. I’m playing very vanilla, and just trying to get out of there with no one getting hurt. Seymour will no doubt have their hands full, but in a one and done format, anything can happen.

And I know Foxy’s a Lafayette guy.

I’m retired!

Not gonna lie Foxxy, got a buddy on the staff at Plainfield go Red Pride.

Seymour 39 East 20 final.

39-20 Seymour 1:37 to go. Seymour about to KO.

Seymour 32 East 20 in the 4th, not sure the time left.

North 48 Jeff 0 Final.

Seymour 26 East 7 just starting third. Running clock in the second half at Greenwood is all I know. Greenwood big.