Training new officials

[rainmaker]

Originally posted by cingram
Our association works a little different up here.

All assignments come in to our board assignor and are distributed from there. I only get my assignments from one assignor unless I go to a provincial tournament where we have a Ref-in-Chief giving the assignments. All levels of ball except University and Collage is handled by one assignor.

We have a season starting tournament (referees tournament if you will) where our first and second years get exposure to the floor. They are not paid for their games. They are there to learn.

We have Senior Refs come and hold classroom sessions on specific topics (pregame conference, Technicals...) and we also do some shadow training... This is where the Junior Officials are on the floor reffing, and there is a Senior Official shadowing them talking in their ear (helping them reposition, remind what to look at (or not look at)...)

What more I am looking for is topics to cover in the classroom. We will obviously be covering positioning, and the major misinterpreted rules (and some of their nuances). (I hope that is what you mean Kelvin by "Myth Rules")

Don't worry - I'll try to get in the points of "Off Ball" and "Reffing The Defence".

At the camp I ran last summer, the two things people appreciated the most were:

1) How to toss. You work on this by standing just outside the cylinder under the basket, tossing the ball up. It should go through the hoop and come back down without touching.

2) 6-feet closely guarded. We worked on this by having a rope with a loop on each end. two people each put one foot into one loop. Then stand on the floor with the rope taut between them. This gives a very good idea of how far apart players can be. It's A LOT farther than most folks think!

A good classroom discussion would also be "correctible errors."