She wasn’t allowed to call shots

Man bites dog.

Tree hits car.

Referee ejected from basketball game?

Michelle Campbell, a high school basketball official in Kansas, was “dumbfounded” to learn she would not be allowed to ply her trade in a game last week because she was a woman.

The Kansas City Star reported that an official for St. Mary’s Academy, a private school north of Topeka, said he could not allow a woman to be put in a position of authority over boys as it was contrary to the beliefs of the school.

Father Vicente A. Griego, the school’s principal, was on a retreat and could not be reached for comment, according to the Star, leaving burning questions unanswered such as “How does the sound of President Hillary Clinton strike you?”

“I was upset,” Darin Putthoff, Campbell’s fellow ref, told the Star. “So I said, ‘You’re telling me you don’t have any teachers at the school who are women?’ ”

The answer was yes, but Father Griego was unavailable to say whether that’s considered a position of authority at St. Mary’s or whether male students just graded their own papers in those classes.

Trivia time

Which school holds the longest winning streak in the UCLA-USC basketball series?

Cubs, uh, will win?

Spring training has begun, and once again pie-eyed dreams dance around the Chicago Cubs.

“I think we are going to win the World Series. I really do,” Cubs pitcher Ryan Dempster told reporters Tuesday.

It was spring training a year ago when Cubs pitcher Carlos Zambrano predicted a World Series victory. And lest we forget, in 2004, Sports Illustrated picked the Cubs to win the World Series, proclaiming: “Hell Freezes Over: The Cubs Will Win the World Series.”

Someday, someone is going to look like Nostradamus. After 99 years, the law of averages has to be on the Cubs’ side. Just ask Red Sox fans.

Sox it to ‘em

Students at the Hommocks Middle School in Larchmont, a suburb of New York, got to gaze at a piece of hardware this week that the Yankees haven’t had their hands on since 2000: the World Series trophy.

The trophy then did a victory tour around town, in a little visit arranged by Mayor Liz Feld, whose husband works for the Red Sox television network.

Still, maybe the Red Sox, having finally beaten the Curse of the Bambino, shouldn’t be tempting fate.

Larchmont was where Lou Gehrig once lived.

An American eagle

The House of Representatives put forth a resolution congratulating the New York Giants for their Super Bowl victory, which passed 412-1 Wednesday.

The lone dissenting vote? Tom Murphy, Democratic congressman from Bucks County, Pa., and former security guard at Veterans Stadium.

“I couldn’t, in good conscience, vote for the New York Giants,” Murphy said Thursday. “The only thing worse would have been a resolution honoring the Dallas Cowboys.”

Hard to tell it’s an election year.

Dog day afternoon

Patty Hearst Shaw -- yes, that Patty Hearst -- has raised the bar for heiresses with pet dogs. Sorry Paris, they’re not just to accessorize with that matching purse anymore.

Shaw’s dog Diva was awarded a red ribbon as best of opposite sex -- a male dog won the French bulldog breed -- at the Westminster Kennel Club show this week.

“It’s like winning a gold medal at the Olympics. Or would this be a silver?” Shaw told the Associated Press.

Trivia answer

USC, which won 42 consecutive games from 1932 to ’43.

The Trojans had a 59-19 record against the Bruins after the 1947-48 season. Then this guy named Wooden showed up in Westwood.

And finally

Alex Thomson, part of a two-man sailing crew on pace to finish second in the Barcelona World Race, was already planning his celebration, telling the London Times, “I’m planning to have a beer, a shower and then sleep. That said, I’ll probably be on the floor after one beer.”

So much for yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum.

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chris.foster@latimes.com