Quote:
Originally posted by BigJoe
Don't sell yourself short. Your rules knowledge and interpretation seem pretty solid from where I'm sitting. It is only a matter of confidence and experience that holds you back. Don't be afraid to challenge yourself. If you have done a varsity girls game and you graded yourself out at a C+ or better it was probably more like a B(you tend to be harder on yourself than others would be) go for that varsity boys game.
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I'm not selling myself short. I know my strengths and weaknesses pretty well, and I have plenty of chances to extend the one, and improve on the other. It is really largely a matter of *** (brace yourselves, here it comes...) PRESENCE *** for me at this point. This includes physical presence, such as conditioning which I need to work on, and mental presence, to see the various choices clearly and wisely choose the best one. This is what I'm working on right now.
And what was so interesting about the game I watched; the ref I referred to as Mr. R just had that je ne sais quois that we all can't help but admire. The partner was good, but lost his cool a little and the presence went way down at those points. It was very instructive to see. It really was a visual lesson in what Jeff Rutledge calls "Presence". I suspect that Jeff has a lot of it, like Mr. R, and gets many compliments for it. He therefore sees how important it is. I really saw that clearly at this game what Jeff talks about, or what I think he talks about. Mr R had the rules down pat, but so did the partner. There were no qestions about rules. It was the Presence that was the difference between the two.
I'm not in any hurry to do varsity boys. It's fun, but so are girls. And we have some very good varsity girls teams around here, so it's plenty to aspire to. And even though I've gotten a couple of very favorable comments from some boys coaches around here, I won't be doing many boys games as a rule -- too much competition. But it's nice to have so many good refs doing boys games that I can watch -- really helps me stretch.