Well, I didn't really like today's assignment.
I don't often say that, but it was true. Not a fun day at the office.
The Toreros hosted the Portland Pilots in a West Coast Conference volleyball match. I was assigned to be the replay official for the match (today as well).
Got to the arena around an hour early. Went and made sure that the equipment was working correctly. At the time it did....I'll explain later.
First set, everything is going ok... then late in the set (22-13 San Diego), Portland thought the call of in was wrong. The assistant coach went crazy thinking that it was out. He damn near ran on to the court and said "You'll see in just a second that you were wrong!" I really wanted to find an angle that proved the referee correct. On the angle that I saw and showed to the down referee, it looked to me like the ball was out. The down referee looked and said nothing to me (I have to fill in some paperwork on the screen when there is a review). I wait to see what he signals and he signals that the ball was out (Gee, thanks for letting me know what was going on).
Second set, we had two reviews, one for each team.
For San Diego, they thought the ball was in. The problem was that upon looking at the video, only one of the two angles that we were supposed to have at our disposal was working. The one angle was skipping over the two to three frames that we needed for confirmation, so the call "stood" because it was inconclusive.
Portland had another review late in the set (I'm noticing a trend....). It was another in/out call. On the opposite side of the benches (and the table). Looking at the video again it looked in to me. However, the original call was out and that is what the referee confirmed.
In the fourth set (as it turned out the final set) San Diego on the bare eye looked like they just missed a pancake (slipping your hand under the ball and having it bonce off the hand). That call was confirmed that it did hit the floor and not the hand.
The final set scores were: San Diego 3-1 (25-15, 28-30 (nothing like over points), 25-14, 25-14).
On Tuesday, I was invited by my friend Callan to join him as we went up to Burbank to meet up with Sean Pebbles. If you don't know the name, you might know the position that he holds. Public Address Announcer for the Cleveland Cavaliers.
Sean is in SoCal doing something with Warner Bros. He said that he could tell us, but then he'd have to kill us. We kinda like living, so we just let it lie. Really cool guy. After we had dinner at BJ's Restaurant in Burbank. After dinner, we went back to his hotel and talked for a bit. He offered us drinks but I just took a water as I was driving (do your own thing, but if you drink and drive.... don't expect me to be at your funeral). Hope to hook up with Sean again when his plans are to come back out to San Diego in August.
