Large arena tips?

[Mark Padgett]

When I was first starting out, I worked a game in the Roman Coliseum. The size wasn't a problem, but the lions were.

[eyezen]

First and foremost try to enjoy the experience, not everyone gets to do these type of events.

Try to get your bearings during warmups, your visual cues are going to be different than a typical HS or small college gym.

Depending on the amount of attention on your event there can be a ton of people at the scorers table and all around the court.

There might even be a media table on the opposite side. Make sure you know which is which. You laugh but I've seen more than one guy report to the wrong table. The team benches may blend end with everyone else and guys get turned around.

With the amount of people at the table find out who your scorekeeper is early hopefully they are wearing the striped shirt to make them easy to find.

More than likely there is a large overhead scoreboard. Ignore it. Use the clocks on the baskets for your time and find the score and fouls on the ribbon boards in the arena.

If there are not a lot of people there it may not be that big of a deal and things will be comfortable. But if there are, you're going to feel nerves because you're out of your comfort zone. It's natural. No different than walking into a packed house for a varsity game for the first time. Just get your cues early and dont forget to referee.

[BillyMac]

Originally Posted by eyezen

There might even be a media table on the opposite side. Make sure you know which is which. You laugh but I've seen more than one guy report to the wrong table.

This is not an urban myth. My local board used to volunteer to work the Doc Hurley Classic (a Christmas charity scholarship tournament), at the Hartford Civic Center (now the XL Center). The first year we worked the tournament, one of our best, and most experienced, officials reported his first foul to the media table, across the court from the scorer's table. This probably happened about thirty years ago, and, to this day, the story makes its rounds at our annual end of the year banquet.

[jTheUmp]

I was fortunate enough to work a couple of times at Target Center (Timberwolves/Lynx home court) in years past, with maybe 300ish people in the stands.

The biggest things that stuck out to me (in addition to the aforementioned lighting differences):
1) Court length: 95 foot court instead of the regular 85-foot HS courts that I usually work... after working 2 up-tempo games with 2 officials... Those extra steps made a big difference.

2) the lack of space on the end lines... you get about 4 feet to work with, which is as tight as some of the tightest HS courts but the majority of HS courts I work have significantly more space. Since I tend to work fairly deep as L, this took some getting used to.

3) Finding the scoreboard/game clock.

4) The noise... or, more correctly, the lack of noise. So few people in such a huge arena.... actually makes everything quieter. Not like the echo chamber high school gyms.

[Dad]

Plenty of good advice here.

Remember to enjoy it and have fun. It's an awesome experience, imo.