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DENVER, CO – Day number two is officially under way. I am still on a bit of east coast time so I was up at 4:30 a.m. and had to will myself back to sleep until 6 a.m. I got up and got in a workout for about an hour before breakfast which was a good way to start the day.
Before I get too much into all the rules reviews we are doing today, let me throw a few fun things at you,. First, let’s just say I am going to come home from this trip hating trains. HATE. There is no doubt in my mind that the place we are staying must’ve at one point been a warehouse site where trains would on and off-load. There are two tracks literally in our backyard. One of them is for a freight train which runs in both directions, and seemingly every half hour.
As you can imagine, every time they come to a crossing, they lay on the horn, because (I guess?) that’s the law. Well, let’s just say they don’t really have any regard for what time of day or night they’re crushing the horn five or six times. It’s literally a scene out of My Cousin Vinny where all of us basically shot up out of bed going “what the hell was that???” I’m sure we’ll adjust as the nights go on, but for now it is making sleep kind of difficult.
The other fun thing that we were made aware of at our morning meeting today was something called the “Target Jersey.” See, if you’re an official you’re kind of used to getting made fun of. Fans heckle, coaches complain, we break each others’ stones. It sort of comes with the territory.
So, the deal with the Target Jersey is basically when you screw up, do something funny or outrageous, you get awarded the Target Jersey for the day. You have to wear it to all non-lacrosse events for the day, whether that means going out on the town or just hanging around in the common areas of the apartments.
There’s a catch to the Target Jersey though. From what everyone here says, it’s probably a size medium and the shirt runs small. And the other (and much grosser) part is that from the time it is given out and passed around, you’re not allowed to wash it. Good luck messing up in the semifinal games on July 19. You might be able to hang it in the closet without a hanger.
On to the rules craziness. We had one session this morning that went over a lot of the questions about the rules that the majority of people got wrong in the online quizzes we had to do leading up to the event. I won’t bore you with the details, but a lot of it runs contrary to what we do in the USA in high school or college. But by now I’ve been studying enough to where it makes sense and I’m not too worried about the “stuff that never happens” but is likely to be on tonight’s test.
The thing that concerns me more are the mechanics. Who is responsible for what. The minutia of how wide the goal line, mid line are – things like that. That’s likely to be on the quiz as well. I’ll give that a quick once over before the exam. The rest we all assume we will just pick up as things go on.
In other news I got four or five more cool looking coins from officials around the world and also some pins. All pretty neat stuff. Today will be one of the more boring days we have here because it’s just meetings and then a paper exam. Tomorrow things really kick into gear and we get to move around a little bit.
We just got back from taking the rules exam and it’s definitely a load off our minds at this point. Time to relax and stay hydrated before our fitness tests tomorrow morning. Bus leaves for University of Denver at 7:15 a.m. so we need to be on our game. One more test outside of really officiating then as we were all sitting around saying this afternoon, we’ll get to finally do what we do.
