4 Hours : The Official

It’s 4:05 p.m. and Eunetta Pickett, 58, scurries into the Fountain Valley High gymnasium, neatly dressed in blue pants and a white sweater.

The gym looks just like the thousands of other gyms she has seen in almost four decades of officiating.

The acoustics in this one leave much to be desired, however, and the screams and giggles of about 90 girls mixes with a stereo blaring the Village People’s “YMCA,” creating a joyful din.

“The music usually is so loud,” she says smiling and holding her hands over her ears.

At 4:30 p.m., after checking the height of the net, exchanging pleasantries with the coaches and ensuring that her student scorekeeper knows the rules, Pickett climbs into the high official’s platform. She will remain standing there for more than two hours, officiating first the junior varsity match and then the varsity as Fountain Valley hosts Los Alamitos.

Pickett, who has the top officials’ rating from the Orange County Volleyball Assn., is like the godmother of officials in Orange County.

Lori Biller, the Barons’ coach, remembers Pickett officiating her volleyball matches when she attended La Quinta High and played for a local club in the early 1980s.

“Listen to her, she [officiated] when I played and we didn’t give her any bull like players do today,” Biller admonishes a Baron player.

After playing every sport available to her at Los Angeles Dorsey High and Orange Coast College, Pickett has been an official in myriad sports, including softball and basketball, at the high school and college levels.

In most of the sports, she has instructed other officials.

For Pickett, officiating is simply a way of life.

“If I didn’t do it, I’d sit home and be bored,” says Pickett, who has six grandchildren. “I love the kids and it’s a challenge.”

She also enjoys watching how the athletes have changed over the years--especially the girls. Lithe, spandex-clad figures with bows in their hair now leap as high as the boys used to leap.

When Picket attended Dorsey in the 1950s, girls didn’t focus on a particular sport but participated in “play days,” traveling to other schools for what amounted to organized playground time.

Afterward, girls from the home school provided punch and cookies.

Officiating also has changed over the years. In 1971, Pickett officiated at the AIAW national basketball championships at Penn State. She squished into a station wagon with eight players and all their luggage for the four-hour drive from the airport to State College, Pa.

These days, Pickett often officiates with her friend and colleague, Joan Clamp, 60.

“We were born in the wrong time. It would be fun playing now,” says Clamp, a grandmother of four.

Several times a week almost year-round, Pickett and Clamp head somewhere in Southern California to officiate. During volleyball season, they will work a high school match and then go to a nearby college to work a college match. Often, they don’t return to their homes in Costa Mesa until 11 p.m.

That’s quite a work day for a couple of 60-ish women. For Pickett, her bright pink, manicured fingernails and short, stylish coiffure conceal a durable nature.

She was the quarterback on her elementary school football team, leading the Los Angeles 42nd Street School to a city championship. She still plays tennis twice a week in a league in Fountain Valley, often against opponents half her age.

Tonight is an easy night because there is no college match to which they must rush, so Clamp and Pickett enjoy a leisurely dinner.

Clamp, who played every sport at Anaheim High before graduating in 1954, has known Pickett for more than 20 years. At dinner, Pickett gets in a dig only a friend could get away with.

“I’m the young one,” she says with a smile.