Help/Advice on working solo

[BlitzkriegBob]

Well this is turning into an interesting volleyball season for me. Night before last I had a JV/Varsity match scheduled. This is my third year doing volleyball and I was looking forward to doing this match since it would be my first exposure to a higher level of volleyball than I've worked before. I have done two or three JV/Varsity matches each of the last two years, but always at a private school which did not feature what anyone would consider great volleyball action.

So I get there thinking "I'll ask to go up for the first match to get experience at the JV level". The problem is, nobody showed up to work the match with me. The AD was there, and working the phone, but wasn't able to contact the scheduled official or anyone else who was available to work. So now I'm working this match alone.

I had worked just one other match solo before, and that was a 7th grade A/B match. I made sure that the scorekeeper and timekeeper were aware of their duties. There weren't any real problems during the JV match. I kept track of substitutions, but pulling my rotation wheel out and marking down subs seemed to be taking too long, so I made the executive decision to allow the scorekeeper to track subs during the varsity match. Now I've been lucky enough to have had some very good scorekeepers and a few good lines people this year, but for the varsity match I had a high school senior keeping the scorebook for the very first time, a slightly experienced timekeeper who only messed up the scoreboard about three times (twice on scores and once on time between matches), one lineswoman who was spending more time cheering and clapping for the home team than giving me signals, and one lineswoman who was wanting to make over the net calls from her position. I'm not kidding, she actually stopped play twice during the match to come up to the stand...once to inform me that someone had reached over the net to set the ball (?) and once to inform me that she had seen a tip on a play that happened two feet in front of me when I neither saw nor heard a tip.

Okay, so now let me tell you what I watched and couldn't watch and I would like feedback. I could not see myself taking my eye off the ball at any point during the match, so looking for illegal alignments had to occur before the whistle for serve. I tried to keep my eyes on the net for as long as I possibly could, but I know that I had to have missed net violations and center line violations that were taking place once my focus was moved away from the net. Too many times I was watching digs being made as I could sense the net being touched. Was I wrong to not keep track of subs? If I should have been keeping track of them, would it have been bad mechanics for me to keep my wheel in my hand rather than my pants pocket? What exactly are my responsibilities regarding the official score? I straightened out the scorekeeper and timekeeper (who was running the scoreboard) once when I knew they had given the wrong team the point, but on one other occasion I was not 100% sure that they had messed up the score so I let the scorebook prevail. I kept track of timeouts. I checked starting lineups from the court as I would if I were the umpire before going up on the stand. Are there any tips anyone can provide for working a match solo?

The match ended up going 5 games, and while I think I did an okay job, I was still a little bummed that I didn't get some valuable experience working this match with a veteran official. As far as rules interpretations went for the night, I was happy to verify later that night that two no-calls I made that night were good no-calls. Mostly I have lingering questions about mechanics. I hope I never have to work a JV/Varsity match solo again, but if it happens I want to be better prepared.

By the way, I follow on the NFHS board also, and I've kinda gotten the impression that USAV uses only one official. Am I wrong in my assumption? Is that good experience? I've thought about trying to get involved with that since I work only about 20 matches and two tournaments a year during the short high school season here. Most of those matches are still middle school, though this year I'm actually working half a dozen freshman matches in addition to two JV/Varsity matches.

TIA,

Bob