My first camp experience...

[TerpZebra]

Hey everyone,

I'm a new member here (although I have lurked for several weeks). As you might be able to tell from my username, I'm from the University of Maryland, where I got started with officiating in intramural sports. This past week, I attended my first camp at the Radford University. It was run by Duke Edsall and was quite an interesting experience. We were understaffed with officials becaue of several no shows. Therefore, in 3 1/2 days, I ref'd 45 games. This was my first experience dealing with coaches, and what an experience it was. Fortunately, I had several college officials observing me and giving me advice on how to handle the situations. I've heard people say that you gain about 3-5 years of experience by going to camp, and I must say that this it gave me a whole new insight into being an official.

This coming august I will be up at Cornell University helping out with the intramural program there, and ref'ing high school basketball and lacrosse. While I have already been accustomed to lacrosse coaches, this will be the first time I've ever faced a real life situation with high school basketball coaches in a non-camp setting. Do you people out there have any advice on what things I can say to coaches, or stories of how you have handled them when you were just starting out? Thanks for the insight, and hopefully I can be a regular poster around here.

TerpZebra

[Brian Watson]

What you'll find is you can run away from the lacrosse coaches, but basketball coaches will hang on you for a while.

[Mark Padgett]

OK - here's how to prepare for your first game. Take a tape recorder down to the animal shelter and tape about one hour of howling dogs. Then go home, lock yourself in a closet and play the tape for two hours straight at full volume. When you come out, practice your technical foul mechanic.

Now you're ready to handle coaches.

Originally posted by Mark Padgett
OK - here's how to prepare for your first game. Take a tape recorder down to the animal shelter and tape about one hour of howling dogs. Then go home, lock yourself in a closet and play the tape for two hours straight at full volume. When you come out, practice your technical foul mechanic.

Now you're ready to handle coaches.

Mark's advise just about covers it!!! But a week or so ago there were a couple of threads regarding how much to take, verbally, from coaches. We mostly concur that if a call is "bad", try to let it go but if the ref is "bad" then it's a "T". If they question your integrity, then it's a "T". Also the universal stop sign works wonders, but just like on the road if they run through the sign, "T" 'em up.

[mick]

Originally posted by TerpZebra
I've heard people say that you gain about 3-5 years of experience by going to camp, and I must say that this it gave me a whole new insight into being an official.

Terp,
Just guessin' here that the camps from which you really gain the most experience are the one's where you pay to be taught, and not the one's where you get paid to officiate.
Regardless, the more games we work, to a point (45 games in 3-1/2 days...WOW), the more we learn.
Have fun.
mick

[rainmaker]

The best advice I have received regarding handling coaches is, treat them the way a healthy mature parent treats a 4-year-old child. You humor them along and try to "work things out" to a point, but if the coach steps over the line, whack him/her. You draw the line and you warn the child/coach when he/sne is getting close to it. But never move the line once it is set. And expect a temper tantrum, but don't allow any escalation. If you think about this a little, it might be the perfect set of guidelines for you, as it has been for me.

[112448]

TerpZebra

glad to see you joined the forum and it was great to meet you at Radford last weekend. keep up the great work and feel free to drop me an email at any point. get it from kearney.

Jake