This past weekend - an embarassment of NSV's

Holy crap! This past weekend was the first weekend of the Girls Soccer State Cup Championship in Wisconsin. This means I was refereeing with a lot of other referees that I only see a few times a year and who hadn't seen me since spring or early summer. When I made my decision to improve my lifestyle in July, my primary goal was to have lost a significant enough amount of weight by State Cup so that the "higher ups" and my peers in the referee community would take notice. Well mission accomplished and then some.

I received all sorts of compliments this weekend. Things like "good to see you, where's the rest of you", "I didn't even recognize you", "don't take this the wrong way but you look goooooood", etc. At one of my games I heard two of the adminstrators talking behind me about how I looked like a whole new person and the one joked that I lost a 100 pounds. I also got swamped with questions about how I did it and had the opportunity to show off the MFP Android app.

My on-field performance was also a huge NSV. After working 4 games both on Saturday and on Sunday (running in 6 of the 8 for a total of 500 minutes of soccer), I had no shin splints, didn't need to take any ibuprofen and ultimately felt pretty good afterwards, just a little stiff. I felt great on the field and really never felt fatigued to the point of being out of breath. Everytime I needed a good hard sprint, my body responded. In my last game of the weekend, the eighth game overall, I was working the middle on a U18 match and even late in the second half had enough energy and power to sprint hard down the field to keep up with a breakaway that had with a head start of 10 yards on me. Not only did i catch up, I actually beat them to the penalty area, about a 70 yard sprint, and was right there on the spot to make the foul/no foul call I knew would be coming.

However, I think my favorite NSV of the weekend came from another referee who wasn't talking to me at all and I'm not sure even knew I was there or could hear him talking. He was talking to another referee about appearance on the field and how it affects game management. I heard him make the comment "Unless your one of the skinny guys like Tony". I almost lost it. Someone referring to me as one of the "skinny guys"?!?!? Hell Yeah!!!