I would agree with everything you said, but just being on the court is not a good enough reason. Yeah, you are on the court, but what are you doing while you are there? One of the main reasons that you do not learn really anything, is because you see things that never happen in HS or JH games. You see hardly any defenses or real offenses run. That puts you at a great disadvantage, because in "real" games you are going to see screens, backdoor, ball movement, zone defenses, set plays and most of all better conduct on the part of players. That is why you should not do them. Because if a kid goes balistic on you and cusses you out, it is going to be hard for the state to justify that behavior in any way and their coaches will probably do something themselves too. If that happens in a rec. game, you might not ever know what the consequences are. All they might have to do is pay a fine and they play the next game. Do that in Illinois, you will definitely miss one game, but it could be more.
I also want to say, I am not talking about AAU, summer leagues or anything that is in the off season. Off season rec. leagues are under greater watch and rules most of the time. The summer leagues I have done have actual coaches present (not that makes a great difference). But because of the coaches being present, they run offenses and defenses, no freestyle basketball. They usually play with other teammates, and if not the kids are all current HS and JH players. This makes a big difference because they realize you might have done their games before or will do their games in the future. And also many of the camps are done with the watchful eye of assignors and evaluators. And everyone working the games have a license to officiate or will when the season starts. No weekend warriors for the most part. And finally, the ones that I have done, are at actual schools, so the behavior in those schools are monitored by individuals that have responsibility other than just running a tournament or league. Now these things might not be the most important of all, but it makes the experience much more of a learning experience than just being on the court. But this is how I feel.
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Originally posted by Kelvin green
I agree with both sides. Sometimes rec is not a decent experience.
However for a new official you should work as many games as you can. There is nothing that takes the place of being on the floor. The more times you see people running around, trying to set picks, banging on rebounds, guarding each other you should learn something about the game. This is where you can practice reffin the defense and off ball. Sometimes you can ref off ball the whole night because you know your partner is on ball 100% of the time! You learn to blow your whistle, you learn not to blow your whistle. Each time you do it you get more confidence. If all you do is 30 HS games a year you wont get the experiences that you need. AS was mentioned above the more games you do the more likely that there will be something off the wall that happens that you learn to handle. I still ref some "rec ball" a lot of it is kids ball ( a lot of our 9th grade leagues here are run by the rec dept and are games that have good crowds and some fairly decent competition) I would get with your assignor to pick and choose. There are leagues I wont do. There are some men's leagues that you should do. Find the leagues that have the guys who have played D1/II/JC ball, that have the 6'2to 6'6 , 260lb.guys (even if they are a little out of shape) because many of these guys know how to post, push, and set picks etc it will help you HS game.
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