elieve me, that was a lot harder than it sounds, keeping my mouth shut, that is. My assignor would phone me up at 6 p.m. on a Saturday night, asking me if I'd do a girls Bantam game at 9 that night.

My gut reaction was to reply with profanity and arrogance, something along the lines of "Don't you know who I am? I've done Junior and Senior playoffs, and international hockey and you want me to do a Bantam girls game on a Saturday night, with three hours' notice. Go [expletive deleted] yourself."

But I never did. Almost always I'd reply "No problem," and the only times I turned down games like that were occasions when I really was otherwise committed.

The "go to" guy

The first few weeks of the season I got few games because there were a lot of officials; and if they couldn't do their assigned games, they'd phone their buddies.

Continued...