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Hi all...I haven't posted messages on this forum before but read the board fairly regularly. Reading posts on this website has been a great way to keep the mind in tune with officiating all year long. I'm in Des Moines, IA and have been at this a dozen years or so.
My question for the group is related to something I agreed to undertake this fall, which is leading the Des Moines Football Officials Association. A big part of what this entails is setting the agenda for our in-season meetings. I am penciling together our agenda right now and could use some help. We typically have 30-50 at any given meeting, and we have six meetings that go an hour-and-a-half during the season, which typically we included a "mechanics" or "rules" presentation or another type of "feature" discussion. Wondering if any of you have been a part of any specific presentations that worked well or if you had any other suggestions.
As far as the "features" (main speaker, discussion leader) Here is what I've come up with so far:
1. I have the Officials Coordinator from the State Association scheduled...this is the person in charge of all the playoff assignments and the evening should take care of itself.
2. I have a trainer/physical therapist from a local Orthopedics office to give information on training and injury prevention related to officiating.
3. I tentatively have an attorney and accountant (members of the association) to talk about legal issues and financial issues related to officiating.
4. My main focus this year is on retaining young members. We've had a terrible problem in the past not with getting new officials, but with KEEPING them. I couldn't count the number of guys that work a year or two and then bow out. This is a whole other topic of discussion, but basically I am starting a "mentoring" program for the association where a veteran crew will take a new guy under their wing for a year or two, answering questions, working some lower-level games, etc. Then after that training period is over, we need to have the younger guys start forming crews instead of lingering around waiting for someone on an existing crew to die or get transferred out of state. My goal is to give these guys the confidence to form their own crews.
I am digressing...what I need are any riginal/popular ideas that you may have seen at your meetings. I've done some video presentations in the past and would welcome anyone that could point me towards something helpful along those lines...or anything else your group may have done that "worked".
(By the way, I have my first game in 10 days! Aren't you all jealous?)
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