[JRutledge]

The pre-game is for the crew, not for the players or kids. All the pre-game is going to do is to get the crew on the same page. Most of what is what is discussed in a pre-game is strictly for the official's benefits and makes situations easier to navigate. I have had games where we had no pre-game (traveling issues, job issues making this difficult) but because I work on a crew, we already know most of the things we are going to do anyway. So it is not the end of the world not to have a pre-game. It just makes it difficult if the walls are burning down around you and you have not built some rapport before the game.

Since I work on a crew our pre-game discussions are different from week to week. We usually do not talk about very basic stuff. Most of the time we talk about the teams that are playing, the coaches and their background if we have knowledge of that situation, situations that we might have had problems with in the past and maybe we not covered very well in the past and quiz each other on rules and penalty situations. We also talk a lot during the week about things that limit the things we might talk about on game day. Also in our area we work a lot of double headers and having a very long pre-game are not easy to do many times. Usually the first game is used to kind of as a "dress rehearsal" to what we are going to expect during the varsity game.

It really is not that big of a deal if you have some standard mechanics in your association or you work with the same people week to week.

Peace