I would never say that you can just get a full varsity schedule your 3rd year. You have to be good and you have to have the right people in your corner. If you do not, you will never move up anyway. But most of all, you must be good and solid. I benefited from having my mentor work with me off the bat. He had me doing things that others that were starting out were not doing. I did my first game ever with him, a 5th and 6th grade girls game. All he told me to do was get my arm up. Do not worry about birddogging or anything other than what he told me. I did not try to do everything together like others do. I started off very slow, and once I got confrontable at one thing, he moved me on to the next thing. I feel that it gave me a head start. Then I watched every game I could and never left early for a varsity game after a JV one. This motivated me to get better and prove that I was a better official than the varsity officials that I watched. After you see the horrible mechanics and lack of hustle, this can really motivate you, especially when you realize that you can do that and more. There is much more than that to it, but that just scratches the surface on some of the things I did.
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Originally posted by Tim Roden
4th year and first boys JV game? You won't move up to fast doing that. This is my fourth year and every year the game I do the most of is boys JV. I called two this week alone. So now that you are at this level, do a good job of it first.
Second thing, like Rut mentioned, is get a mentor. If you can get this commissioner to mentor you that would be great. But I wouldn't get your neighbor to do it. He is not where you want to be.
Third, if it really is that hard to move up, I would consider a move. Different area's of the country work differently and some area's, like Rut's, you can be doing a full Varsity Schedule by the third year. One thing I would recommend is that you don't move up any faster then you have to. You call a high profile game before you're ready and you won't see that game for a very long time.
The real test on moving up is what you do during the summer. I've mentioned some of the summer ball I've done to assignors and they automatically say I'm ready for the next level. If you can call that you can call this.
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