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Goose,
Your saying the words mechanics and uniformity in the same sentence. They don't go together anymore, trust me I am one of the younger ones on this forum, and I mean this as far as signals mechanics go. Officiating, especially at the higher levels it is about selling your call, looking clean and crisp while doing so, communicating well enough that your partners know what the call was, and admist all that having your own style, because for those of us who want to MOVE UP it is about two things:
GETTING THE PLAYS RIGHT(first and foremost) and looking athletic and clean while getting the plays right.
See I am one of those SEC kids that tomegun was talking about. All my mentoring comes from guys in the SEC umbrella, and these are the most UNIFORMED guys I know.... as far as getting the calls correct. They don't care if they use a hold signal and it is different than the one in the CCA manual or the NFHS manual, the supervisors are happy as can be if you get the call right and you communicate well with your partners(they care about a whole lot more than that, but it is too much to name).
The above is all the NBA guys stress. They want you to be in the right position so you can give yourself an even better chance at what they want the most:
GETTING THE PLAY RIGHT.
Don't get me wrong mechanics are great........ at the high school level, where 80% of the guys don't care about moving up, you need those because the guys who don't know hardly anything about the sport try to get into officiating and the supervisor takes them because he doesn't have enough officials already. You are on a forum where I am sure that at least 65% of the guys on here would love to get a call tommorrow to referee something higher than HS or the college level they are currently at. I wish it was just open to guys aspiring to moving up and wanting to understand the game better and why they missed calls instead of guys who say a guy with 7 years of experience is not good enough to coach a clinic. Zach Zarba is one of the best teachers I have had. He's not one of THE BEST IN THE WORLD because he has a lot of experience it is because he has had some of the greatest mentors and teachers this game has known. For the love of all things holy, his mentor was Ronnie Nunn. I would have to go out on a limb and dare to say he learned alot of what he needed to know in just a couple of years.
Last but not least the point you tried to make about a 7 year guy not having seen as much as a 15-20-30 year guy, is a good point, but in the case of SEC they don't want thay 15-20-30 year guy they want that 1 to 4 year guy and stick him with some guys who have done it a little longer than that and by the time his 7th season rolls around, as far as knowing how to officiate a game with all the great guys that taught him that were in the upper echelon of basketball officiating, he beats the he** out of the 15-20-30 yr vet who thought he knew all he needed to know and had seen almost everything.
I am sorry to rant at you like this, but I know we are coming from 2 totally different sides of the spectrum, because I am young and you are older. I just want you to understand that if a kid is caught early (like I was) and taught by some great people (like I am) and put in a great system (like me and many others are) they have a great chance to succeed in a short amount of time. They don't have to see every play, they just have to use the knowledge that these great educators of the games have given them and apply it to the best of their abilities to get the play right, and 9 times out of 10 they will get it right because it is a chain system where I am working with a guy who has done this for a couple of years and had that play a couple of years ago with a guy who had that a couple of years ago, so on and so forth. It is all about learning quickly and sitting down and having chats about plays. It is also about watching film. With the technology we have these days there is no reason a kid that wanted to work hard enough could see alot and if not all the weird plays a guy who has been reffing 20 yrs has seen in just a matter of 2 yrs or less. I watch film constantly and it has been the shining light for me. If you just eat, sleep, and breathe this stuff you can be that good, but you almost have to do so and I know people like Zach Zarba just to name one, that was bitten by the bug, and just fell utterly, and deeply in love with this profession and I reiterate the word profession.
And to think all I was going to say on this post originally was:
IT IS ALL ABOUT GETTING THE PLAYS RIGHT!!!!
So much for that.
[Edited by refTN on Jul 20th, 2005 at 03:15 AM]
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