[grunewar]

We have a rigorous process for "new officials" with less than one full season of high school officiating experience (they are considered "applicants)

Our applicant program is a combination of classroom and game-based learning that lasts approximately ten weeks and is intended to get them ready for the season.

Our course intends to prepare them to referee HS basketball, whether they have previous experience or not.

During our classroom meetings, we discuss the fundamentals of officiating: rules, floor coverage, positioning, game administration, and game management.

The hands-on portion consists of participation as a referee-in-training in 'live' games. These games are mandatory, where applicants are partnered with experienced officials and evaluators, who provide guidance, help correct mistakes, and generally hope to get them off to a good start as they rotate in and out of the games.

This system seems to serve us well over the yrs and our trainers are good guys (IMO) who want new officials to succeed. Like many other Associations, many of our officials are getting a little "long in the tooth" (me included) and we need some good, younger blood in the ranks.