Now You See It - Now You Don't

by ed riley copyright 2001

A friend of mine, Dave, runs a summer league for average teams. It's not for the super elite club teams, but it's a great parish league for the average team. Dave and I are even good enough friends that we co-coached our daughters' AAU 11 and under team.

Here's the rest of the background. A guy named Tom is the Lay-Director of basketball for this parish. He is also, quite possibly, the worst referee that has ever set foot on a hardwood court.

Last spring Tom reffed a game and called 30 fouls in the first half, by himself. The other ref called a total of 2 fouls. By the end of the game, Tom had called over 50 fouls. A normal game takes at most, an hour to play. This game lasted almost two hours. At the end of the game, one team only had four players left that had not fouled out.

Here's the last bit of info that you need to know before I can go on. The girls who kept track of the scores and fouls at the scorer's table, were all 6th-8th graders that went to that parish. And, away we go.....

I had a game there and found out that Tom was going to referee the game. I knew I was screwed because my girls have always played hard physical basketball. I knew that it would be a long game with the other team shooting a lot of free throws. So, I called my buddy, Dave, and told him what I had planned and told him he had to be there to see this.

Next I went to one of my favorite stores in the world, Spencer Gifts. I truly do love that store. I bought my supplies for the game, and I was ready for the next step.

I called up the coach we were going to play against, he was another friend of mine, and told him my plans. After regaining his composure, he agreed to be a party to my plan. Before the game, I met with the opposing coach and gave him his supplies.

As you already know, before the game, you have to fill out the scorebook with your player's names and numbers. Well, right before the game, and I mean right before the tip off, I filled out the book and made sure I handed it to Tom, the ref. He's pretty anal retentive, so after CAREFULLY scrutinizing the scorebook, he handed it to the scorers. The whole time I was sweating like a gutted pig.

The game began and within the first two minutes Tom called a grand total of 6 fouls. As he looked to the scorer's table to tell them the number of the offending player, this is what he saw. Both young girls were rifling through all of the papers on the scorer's table. From the looks on their faces, they were desperate.

When Tom couldn't get their attention, he called a referee's time-out and walked to the table. When these girls saw him coming, they straightened up and one of them said, "I'm sorry, who was the foul on?" Tom told them, blew his whistle and started the game.

As soon as the game started, these two girls started going through everything on their table. They looked under their chair, under the table, and they even looked on the stage behind them. I felt sorry for them, because the other coach and I had filled out the scorer's book with disappearing ink.

It wasn't another thirty seconds before the next foul was called. Tom looked at the scorer's table and the two girls were tearing up the place trying to find the pages the other coach and I had filled out. He called another referee's time-out and walked over to them.

"What are you doing?" he asked.

"You wouldn't understand," replied one of the girls. "It's a girl thing."

Well, the other coach and I about lost it. These girls didn't want to be embarrassed about losing, not one, but both pages of player's names and numbers. And how do they cover it up? "It's a girl thing!" If that's not priceless, what is? At what age do you girls learn to use this universal female way of saying, "Don't ask?"

Tom just shook his head, and started the game again. You could tell who wore the pants in his family. Another 30 seconds went by, he called another foul. This time the girls 'fessed up and told him they had lost the pages. He stopped the game and the three of them looked all over for those pages.

Tom saw Dave and motioned him over into a conference with both coaches. Tom explained the situation and asked Dave if he would ref the game for him, and Dave agreed. Next Tom said he was going to do the scorer's table and could both coaches fill out a new page with the player's names and numbers.

The other coach and I went to the book, took both pens off of the table and filled out our pages in real ink. Then we left the two pens with disappearing ink on the table for Tom to keep score with and took the real pens with us.

Next the other coach and I asked Dave, our new ref, and my friend who was in on it, if we could take a three minute break and quickly go to the restroom. He nodded and even joined us. We didn't make it through the restroom door before all three of us lost it. We couldn't control the laughter. There was more snorting and cackling than you would ever hear at a farm.

On the way back to the gym, Dave told his daughter to go find her two girl friends who were doing the scorer's table and explain the practical joke and to tell them that no one was mad at them. I handed her two fives to give to the girls as a bribe not to tell anyone.

The game began, again. Now we were rid of the ref we didn't want, and we were waiting to see how he was going to handle keeping score with the disappearing ink. He kept writing down the players points, stare at it for a second, then proceed to watch the game.

My players were all in on the prank by now. So, I sent one of my players to the table to find out how many points she had, you could see him scratch his head and just stare at the page in front of him. Then he took his glasses off, as if this were going to help him. Then he told her to sit down and not bother the official scorer. I absolutely couldn't control it any longer. I laughed until I couldn't breathe. My throat hurt, my stomach hurt, and my head hurt. I looked over and the other coach was about in the same shape.

Somehow we made it through that game, and to this day, I don't know how. I don't know who won and I really don't care. After the game, I took Dave, his daughter, her two friends who started on the scorer's table, and my team for a milkshake. The other coach and his team met us at Ted Drew's, a milkshake icon in St. Louis, and we laughed for what seemed like hours.