There was a deaf and dumb referee last night.
My partner last night literally was deaf and dumb. He had only about 15% hearing and 15% speech capabilities. And he was on the court refereeing a girls varsity basketball game!!
"Blind Ref" by Nathan Rupert via Flickr
And he did a mighty fine job of it, too! The referee mechanics have to be adjusted a bit since he cannot call out team colors for foul calls or out of bounds plays, etc. And the coaches could not yak at him as he ran up and down the sidelines. (Actually that's a real blessing for him!!)
I explained his situation to the Coaches, Score Keeper and Clock operator before the game started so they were all set to accommodate some unorthodox communications from him for foul reporting and we had no problems there.
Though the most common complaint from fans usually is us Refs are blind rather than our hearing and speech capabilities.
Anytime a coach has a question about a call my partner made, the coach had to holler at me, expresses concern to me and then I had to try to communicate the coaches concern to my partner and he had to try and describe what he saw. It took a little while to accomplish that and pretty soon the coaches just quit asking!! Return next line. Delete that?
The most interesting thing about it was that I do not think the fans even realized he was deaf and dumb!! And that is a real accomplishment!!
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