The Beauty of the T

So I previously said that I wanted to focus on my life as a referee when I re-started my blogging and this will be my first post on the subject. It is now nearly 12:30 am and I have just gotten home from a rodeo trip (this is what we call our out of town trips to little po dunk towns to ref). We left at 3:45 and made the trip out to Floresville where my partner and I officiated 4 middle school basketball games. Yes I said that right, we did 4 games. And if you have never seen, let alone refereed a middle school basketball game then you have no idea how bad it is. Don't get me wrong I love it and there are some decent ball players but overall it is terrible. The first of our 4 games tipped off at 5pm and we finally finished up at about 9:30pm. So if you can imagine the soreness of my legs from running up and down a basketball court for 4 1/2 hours. Sometimes I wonder how marathon runners do it and then I have nights like tonight where I think it would be a piece of cake.
I'm sure you are wondering how I just made it home if my games ended nearly 3 hours ago. Well when you factor in time to shower and change, driving, and stopping to get something to eat. You see how it is possible. Yet I will be up in the morning ready to go again as I have 2 games starting at 11am which means I will have to leave the house by 9:45am. And I'm sure you are now wondering why I am writing and not in bed already. Well it is actually pretty simple, gotta wash my uniform. I have 2 full uniforms and referee 12 games in 5 days this week which means I get to stay up and wash, dry, and hang them up so I will be ready to go in the morning.
If all of this has made you wonder why I put myself through this, the answer is simply 2 things: I love it and for the money. I love running up and down the court trying to be the best official I can be and the money is better than any part time job I could have while I got to school. Generally we average about $35 a game with games usually lasting 1 to 1 1/2 hours per game.
This brings me to the point of my post today. Every year of my officiating career thus far I have always joked with my family and friends that I give out a lot of Technical Fouls (T's) and over the last few years I have averaged 1 T per 3-4 games officiated. I generally work about 120 games a season so that means that I give out approximately 30-40 T's per season. And if anyone is wondering no I never think twice about doing and and I do enjoy giving them. Back to my point, thus far this season I have given 6 T's in 10 games. 3 of which I gave out tonight. If I continue that trend (I doubt that it will happen) based on 120 games this season I will give out 72 T's. I find this particularly humorous because one of the things that I wanted to work on this season was to be more open to talking with coaches in order to cut down on T's and yet I have actually increased and nearly doubled my previous amount. Not that I mind, like I said I do get some enjoyment out of putting coaches or players in their place when they decide to act out but I really don't see this trend continuing. To me it is just a tool that can be used to keep control and order and I freely use the tools given me so like the title of the post says The Beauty of the T.