Quote:
Originally posted by rotationslim
As for training officials, we make one player from each team stay to ref the game after theirs, (2nd games does before and after) in adult play. We don't have "called" refs, which is fine by me, why institutionalize pain on people, this way is kind of "pay to play" if you want to continue playing, you (or someone on your team) has to take a shift reffing. For young men games, I just line up adults who know how to do it.
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This is pretty much how I do it. For adults, we only have two games per night. First game provides refs for 2nd and 2nd provides for first.
Quote:
Originally posted by rotationslim
We did official training, a single, one hour session a friday night before the season started. ... We had a major carrot, in order for a team to be eligible for post-season play they had to send at least one person to be trained. 8 of nine teams sent people. Next year we'll do it again, and hopefully get a second person on each team trained, the goal being to slowly up the quality. Obviosly in an hour you can just hit the basics, simple mechanics, commonly misunderstood rules, and house rules, but it cut down a lot on "Hey, a technical foul is only one shot" stuff.
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I hold a 2 hour training class prior to the season. I encourage each ward to send at least two people and as many more as they want. Some send 6 or 7.
My carrot is that standings are determined by a point system that considers wins and losses as well as covering the referee assignments:
Win=2
Loss=1
Forfeit=0 (usually because of insufficient number of players...rarely occurs)
Trained Ref=2 (I grant waivers for some referees that didn't attend the class based on ability)
Other Ref=1
No Ref=0
So, for a 8 game season, each team can have a maximum of 32 points. They can get 16 points, just for having the refs show up.
I've experimented with different systems over the years of making sure each team gets a ref present.
My current system seems to have the best results. However, I still had one team this year that had no ref for over 50% of their games. They happened ot be at the bottom of the league anyway and the points were irrelevant. Next year, I plan to address this by, at mid-season, eliminating any team that has no ref show up more than 2 times.
When there is a post season tourney, the ref points have changed seeding and sometimes who actually makes it in the tourney.
I do the same thing for the Women's league...although it's often husbands that actually do the reffing.