[Joe McCain]

Mr. RefTN,

While a absolutely salute your enthusiasm, I would caution you against the tempation to imagine that you are qualified to work higher levels of this game because you have attended a remarkable camp. Further, there is no substitute for being a student of the game, and if that means watching hundreds of hours of game film a year, or perhaps getting in the trenches and working some high school or rec ball, then please be assured you aren't wasting your time.

Permit me to share a story from my own experience unrelated to basketball per se, yet the analogy is as appropriate to officiating as it was for me at the time.

I paid for a great deal of my college by driving trucks. For the most part, this meant hauling fresh produce out of the fields to processing plants or canneries. I worked for a company that hired college students almost exlusively, while most of the other companies had seasoned, experienced drivers. Since we all worked out of the same central dispatching areas, we came into contact regularly.

The guys in my company all had brand new trucks to drive with eight speed trasmissions (which is about as close to automatic as it was possible to have) Some of these trucks had fewer than 30 miles on them when we picked them up. A semi truck is consideren NEW until it has 100,000 miles on it and it takes time to break in -- a process which should happen slowely and gently. Instead, my fellow drivers and I all drove with our feet flat on the floor, driving as fast as we could possibly make the bohemiths go, with no consideration for the equipment or the risks we were taking ourselves. We often worked 60 to 100 without sleep.

As you may have already assumed, we had a reputation among the more seasoned drivers as being a bunch of Yahoos! We were discribed as an accident just waiting to happen. Not suprisingly, we all just kind of laughed at all these old geesers; thinking them to be jealous of our new trucks and the fact that we got a bunch of the best runs. What we didn't know was that my company owner used to bribe the dispatcher in order to get us those great runs because it allowed us a chance to haul more frieght, which was how he got paid.

It wasn't until I switched companies, and had one of those old geesers practically adopt me that I began to understand just how much of a YAHOO I truly was. I didn't even understand most of the fundamentals of being safe even though I had been driving for a couple of years.

All of this is a long-winded way of saying, establish a rapport with a very senior, experienced official whom you respect, and become his (or her) apprentice. Allow this mentor to guide your officiating, and potentially, your career. Despite all the wonderful things you have been exposed to thus far, there really is no substitute for experience, and the judgement which often accompanies it.

We may not all share your vision for rapid promotion, and for many, we may have discoverd other aspects of our lives which are equally important to us as officiating is: things that have helped us to create balance. We may not have been put on the fast track to instant succes, and yet, we don't lack a commitment to professionalism either. There is literally a plethora of experience available to you (and me) right here on this website, that were you and I to availe ourselves of this wealth of knowledge, we might discover it would help spring board us to levels of play we only imagine ourselves working right now.

To paraphrase a concept from "Illusions" by Richard Bach, ... everything I've written here might be wrong.

Keep working, growing, questioning, and forming your own ideas of how to best serve this game.