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Old Fri Sep 06, 2013, 09:31am
MD Longhorn MD Longhorn is offline
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Join Date: Sep 2003
Location: Katy, Texas
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Quote:
Originally Posted by rbmartin View Post
I am a High School official in other sports but not in football. Last night, I was drafted on short notice to run the clock/scoreboard for my son's Jr. High football game (FED rules). Fortunately, the game went well (other than ending in a 6-6 tie) but I felt a little unprepared.
My question is, other than the "start the clock" & "stop the clock" signals, what do you officials expect a good timekeeper to be looking for during a game. How can I best educate myself to do this job properly.
1) Start the clock.
2) Stop making me windmill and start the dang clock.
3) Coaches, we're going with a clock on the field because the idiot in the booth won't start the clock.

Sarcasm aside --- this is what we need you for. It's nice if you have the score right, but not critical. It's nice if you keep the timeouts right so we don't get yelled at, but we keep those on the field and tell coaches when they are out... so that's nice, but also not critical. You want to move the ball to whoever has it... cool --- but extremely uncritical from our POV. You want to put down and distance ... helpful to the fan with bad seats, but we don't care (unless you're wrong and we're getting yelled at because of it)

But "won't start the clock" guy is the most infuriating thing at a junior high game.

PS - please don't operate the play clock.
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