I wanted to get some feedback on a game that my partner and I did the other night. This is my first full year with my partner and we are fairly new to officiating. At any rate, we feel we are doing a very good job; enough so that our assignor has evauluated us and half our schedule this year is for Varsity games. This is unprecedented for young officials in my area. We know we have a long way to go to be top rate officials but still feel we are in the upper ranks. (confident not cocky)

My comment is that the season has gone along so far very smoothly until Friday night. We officiated two very small schools. IT WAS A MESS! The athletic talent was lacking and the play was very sloppy. It was obvious that defense was a foreign word. The visiting team was in the double bonus to start the 2nd quarter, and the home team had it shortly thereafter. I compared the game to doing a sloppy junior high game with twice the pace.

The advice I want is what do you do after the game when you feel you did a less than adequate job, even though we were confident that we did? We still didn't feel real good. Typically after other games, we feel confident that we called a good game...we discuss any mistakes and go from there. We almost felt like the play of the teams dictated how we called the game (does that make sense?)

Any advice?

Yes Kenneth what you say makes perfect sense.I had a jv boys game exactly like that yesterday.We were in the double bonus early in the second qtr. and all the the teams did was press hack and body each other.Afterwards my partner and I felt like we sucked.Of course your harder on yourself than anybody.I think the key is factor in the level of play as big as anything else when you self evaluate.By the way of course the instructor and lead assignor of my assoc. picked yesterday to watch me!

There will be days like these....
 

I have been through the same situation... An honest critique, "Debriefing" with your partner and learning from the experience is the best thing you can do.

Additionally, you need to intentionally keep an upbeat, professional attitude while you are on the court; even in these "sloppy" games.

One thing experience provides......
 

is being able to know when you do a good job or not. If you have done a good job, and you get crap for it, you doubt yourself less then when you do not have that experience. Especially when you are younger as an official, you are going to take more crap about calls even if you are perfectly right on the call. Coaches, players and even fans know the experienced officials (or at least the guys/gals that have been around for a while doing their games) and they treated the experienced officials "better" sometimes. So this just comes with the territory.

One thing that you have to remember:

"You can't make chicken salad out of chicken shit"!

You can't play the game, you can't coach the game, the only thing you can do is referee the game. Do the best you can and be consistent that's all you can do.

Good Luck

After the game discuss briefly with your partner then forget about it -have a refreshment and think about your next game!!!

kschau, we all have good and bad games. It has helped me to review the game tape of my bad games. I have been able to improve my game. I will watch 2 or 3 tapes a year. Many times i just want to see 2 or 3 plays. Keep up the good work.