The organizers of last weeks State Farm Holiday Classic (64 teams, 32 girls/32 boys) let it be known that they really want more women refs. I only saw one all week. 50 bucks a game, 2 per day, Bloomington-Normal Il. This years Classic featured a number of top ten teams from around the state in boys and girls, A and AA. The tournament regularly brings in some really talented players and teams. Boys had Eddie Curry, potential NBA prospect and number 1 boys prospect in some ratings. Girls had 3 of top 5 teams in AA ball with a number of great players.

Web site is:

http://www.theclassic.org/

Thanks for the heads-up.

I'll definitely send in my name, and maybe by next year, I'll be ready!

Doghead, want to come too? What a blast that would be!!!

Wow! What a challenge. I'm not sure I will yet be prepared for that level of play by next year. I'll keep it in mind. Thanks Hawks Coach for the info.
Happy New Year Julie and others!
Cheers!
-Becky

Happy New Year all of you.

If you want to know how you're doing, you can find out here because they hand pick the officials for the final day based on the week's performance (which leads me to believe there must be an evaluator at every game). Overall, I would say the officiating was quite good, but I did see a couple of games where management was not at its best. I thought that they did a good job of selecting the officials for the final BTW, one woman for girls championship.

I checked out the site.
 

I was trying to find out some information on who hires the officials for a female official that I am a friend of and how do you get incontact with the person that does the hiring. The email address is not valid (it was sent back). So who is the contact person to for officals if they choose to attempt to do this tournament.

Hawks Coach
 

Hawks Coach,
Did the tournament bring you to Bloomington or are you from the area? Your profile says Silver Springs, MD.

[Edited by mikesears on Jan 2nd, 2001 at 08:01 AM]

Born and raised in BN, U-High grad (they lost by 1 in the Class A final :( ), live in MD now. I go back to the in-laws every other Christmas, always catch as much of the Holiday Classic as my wife will allow. (I would go all day every day if I could get away with it!) It's a good learning experience for me (or that's what I tell the wife) and entertaining to boot.

Re: I checked out the site.
 

Trying to get contact info, will get back to you when I have it. Didn't know that the email was bad.

To Hawks Coach
 

If you go to other basketball games around Bloomington-Normal you may see me on the court. I live in Stanford (home of Olympia HS) and I officiate all over the area. It's cool to know that someone on this board is originally from this area--even if you are a coach ;-)

As a U-High grad, I have seen plenty of Olympia - you had a real nice pool (I was a swimmer!) compared to most places we went (including our home pool).

As for seeing you on the court, if you don't do the Classic, I probably won't see you. I only get back for the holidays, and coaching here keeps me pretty busy all the rest of the time. But I love IHSA bball and catch it when I can.

Hope to do the classic in future
 

I hope to do the classic in the future. I'm only in my second year of licensed officiating so it may take some time to break in. I hope I have a slight edge in that I am a member of the <a href="http://www.bnoa.org">Bloomington-Normal Officials Association</a> and I believe many of the officials we have are quality officials however I don't know if the assignor has any say in who gets picked to do the games. I also work for the company that is the <A href="http:\\www.theclassic.org"> title sponsor for the Classic.</A>

Anyway, good to know that there is someone who was from the area. Good luck to you the rest of the season and keep posting questions and comments. It's good for us officials to hear a coaches perspective once in a while.

Thanks!

Assignor for "The State Farm Classic" Basketball Game
 

I have a contact name for the classic but I want to get some additional information on what qualifications are needed before I give out his name. Just wanted to let you know that I am working on this and it hasn't been forgotten.