Thread: Newby Questions
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Old Tue Aug 16, 2005, 09:34am
varefump varefump is offline
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Join Date: Nov 2004
Location: Virginia
Posts: 81
As the Umpire (R2), it is not your job to blow the whistle on Back-Row attacks. You can give informational signals to the Referee (R1), but he/she is the one to make that call.

I'd say your three main calls are Net Fouls, Centerline Violations, and Illegal Allignment (Overlaps) on serve-receive. As previously stated, seeing overlaps will be your most difficult call. It usually takes a new official two to three seasons before he/she gets even halfway comfortable with tracking setters and hitters.

The main thing is to keep your eyes on the players at the net. Most new volleyball referees have the tendency to watch the ball as it moves away from the net. Your job as Umpire is to 'stay with the net' and blow your whistle whenever the attacker or blocker touches the net or completely crosses the centerline. Missing obvious net fouls will irratate a coach more than missing an overlap.

By the way, are your schools required to supply line judges? Here in Virginia, the use of students as line judges has been prohibited and thus line judges in regular season matches have been deemed 'optional'. As a result, we rarely (less than 5% of the time) have line judges at our disposal. That causes many new officials to try and help the referee with line calls, but at the expense of possibly missing net violations.
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