Quote:
Originally posted by Smitty
In our association meeting last night, our commissioner started talking about the fact that some officials find working certain level games is beneath them. He calmly said that anyone who doesn't want to work any 1A girls games, or 1A/2A varsity games or any particular level games should just please let him know. He then said he would not only excuse them from those lower level games, but also cancel the rest of their season's games.
Moral of the story, he says, is that every game is the most important game of the season to those kids playing in that game. No game is beneath anyone.
I loved it.
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I didn't happen to be there last night...I took my wife and kids out to dinner.
However, there is more than one way to take such a statement (and I don't know what he really intended).
A lot of people overestimate their abillity relative to that of others. An article that I read a few years ago revealed that 80% of the people surveyed felt that their abilties were above average. Basically, at least 30% of the people are simply not as good as they think they are.
There are too many people that think they should be working varsity games that simply are not that good. Those people haven't taken a good look at their own game to see what's missing or how goofy they are on the floor. Many of those same people are the ones that backstab and belittle their perrs in an attempt to push themselves higher by pulling them down rather than working harder to make themselves better. I've actually heard statements from guys that think they should be getting a varisty schedule when they can't even do a very good job on a JV game.
In my earlier years, I thought I should have been working higher games. I didn't get all disgruntled about it but just kept working on my game and kept getting better and better games eventually came. As time went on, I also realized that there were a lot of good officials out there that were better than me and that I just hadn't seen them. I learned that I shouldn't expect to take someone elses games unless I was better...not only just as good.
Also, many are not realistic about the numbers. Only about 25% of the games we do are varsity games, another 25% are JV with 15% Freshman, and 35% middle school. Someone that is not in the top quarter of the association will not get many (if any) varsity games at any level. Someone not in the top 50% is probably getting no varsity game and just a few JV games. Less than 8% of the games are 4A boys vasity and less than 8% are 4A girls varsity.