When I began my officiating career, I started with baseball and basketball.

I didn’t add football until four years later.

The Saginaw/Bay City/Thumb area basketball officials had a great place to get a start on an officiating career. There were many Lutheran elementary schools, and all had basketball teams.

It was a great place to get your feet wet and learn the game.

There were three games in a night: one girl’s game, one young boy’s game, and one older boy’s game, and you officiated all three of them.

I fondly remember Doug Stindt from Saginaw St. Paul.

Doug hired me and all of the officials who worked the Lutheran schools’ games. Doug wore many hats, as did most of the Lutheran school teachers.

Besides serving as the league secretary to hire officials, he was the music teacher, band director, and basketball coach, besides being a great guy.

It was a normal situation to see the St. Paul kids play in a basketball game with Doug coaching, and then, between games, grab their musical instruments to play a few songs with the band (with Doug directing) while still in their basketball uniform.

I refereed games at Saginaw St. Paul, Saginaw Peace, Saginaw Holy Cross, Millington St. Paul, Richville St. Michael, Frankenlust St. Paul (Bay City area), and several others. It was a lot of fun working those games, and I continued to do them even as I got more experienced and had high school varsity games on my schedule. The kids, coaches, and fans were just great. There were always lots of cheerleaders from grades four through eight.

Although you worked three games a night, the gyms were tiny, so you didn’t have to do lots of running, but there were other issues, too.

There was never much room between coaches, benches, fans, and the floor. You had to watch where you were going to not trip over the feet of a fan, coach, or player seated right on the edge of the court. Often, the cheerleaders would be lined up on the baseline, and there was barely enough room for them to stand between the playing floor and the end wall.

If I remember correctly, one gym had such a low ceiling that a shot launched too high could actually hit the ceiling.

When you are the lead official, you end up running backwards as you approach the baseline. In those small gyms, you learned to reach behind you as you approached the baseline so you could feel the wall with your hands and didn’t crash into it with your body.

It was at Richville. It was the first game of the tripleheader, so it was the younger kids and young cheerleaders.

I was running backwards and, when I contacted the wall with both hands, I realized that I had pinned one of the tiny cheerleaders to the wall.

My hands were against the wall with one hand on either side of her head.

When I turned around, her eyes were as big as saucers.

I remember saying, “Sweetheart, if you see me coming, please put out your hands to stop me so I don’t run into you and hurt you.”

She was too scared to even reply.

Those games were truly what school sports should be about. The sportsmanship was great. The fans never booed, and I seldom remember a coach really complaining about a call.

I remember one team that had a player who was mentally challenged. When they put him into a game, his teammates kept passing him the ball so he could shoot it, and the opposing team did not guard him, so he was allowed to keep shooting until he made a shot.

What is not to like about that?

Another Lutheran game I remember, not for the game but for the public address announcement.

It was during the third and final game of the night. It was at Holy Cross Lutheran. There was a time out, and the PA announcer came on and said. “The United States Olympic hockey team just defeated the Russians for the gold medal.”

The crowd roared.

That had nothing to do with officiating, but it is a memory I’ll never forget.

Les Miller, of Hubbard Lake, has retired after 53 years officiating multiple sports around Michigan. He can be reached at theoldref@yahoo.com.