Elbow - with video!

[ChuckElias]

Originally Posted by REFVA

All I was saying, summer ball, rec ball is where you work on your mechanics. This is your training for regular season. Get into bad habits now, they are hard to break later. that is IMO.

RefVA, I think that is a great attitude. It's the attitude I took when I first started officiating. I also think that you are exactly right about bad habits. If you allow them to develop as a young official, they are very hard to break later on when you want to advance.

Having said that, you have to see the other side of the coin. Many officials are already set in their ways. They aren't going to improve their mechanics, they aren't going to work on the little things.

Example from this past weekend. I worked with a very nice guy, a friend, a real quality member of his town. (He coaches basketball at the HS level and has coached younger kids for years.) He is a decent official, but I don't think he cares much about improving his HS schedule.

He has a bad habit on OOB calls to say who the ball went off of, instead of who's going to get the ball. In other words, very often he says, "Red!! You touched it. White ball!" I pointed this out to him after our set of games and he said (literally), "Yeah, I know. I don't care." Decent official, and very good person, but he's not going to move up. Should he be X'd off an assignor's list b/c of that? I don't think so.

If an assignor only used officials with your attitude and work ethic, he wouldn't have enough officials to cover all the Rec League, AAU, Men's League, HS off-season games that he assigns.

So in the winter, for varsity assignments where the W's and L's matter, the assignor can pick and choose the best and hardest-working officials. But in the summer, very often, the assignor just needs to get the games covered. It's not pretty, but it's a fact of basketball life.

[zebraman]

I agree with Chuck. I have seen officials improve a whole lot in the summer. The ones who improve in the off-season are the ones who work hard on doing everything right, including mechanics.

I guess I'm not good enough to have two sets of mechanics (one rec league set and one school ball set). I use the summers to try to clean-up things that I thought looked a little sloppy when getting filmed during school games.

Z

[JRutledge]

Originally Posted by REFVA

Thanks JKJennings for explaining, So as I previously mentioned this is for training. So he is not videotaping for the fun of it. I go back to my previous post. Good training video. Get the mechanics down perfect. All I was saying, summer ball, rec ball is where you work on your mechanics. This is your training for regular season. Get into bad habits now, they are hard to break later. that is IMO. This is where you turn your warm body into a great official..

The problem with what you are saying is you assume that everyone is only working NF mechanics during the regular season. A lot of people that work during the summer are exposed to Pro rules and mechanics, NCAA mechanics and BTW, NF mechanics. Unless this was a camp environment, I would not think "training" would be the proper route.

I can speak mainly for me but I know it applies to others. I think it is overrated what we do during the summer as building bad habits. I know many officials that can do things during the summer they would not do during the regular season and you would never know it. If the use of mechanics created bad habits, then when I work 2 person or 1 person during the summer, I would be at a total lost when I work 3 person the entire regular season. It really is not that hard to overcome what you do in the summer.

Peace

[Grail]

Can't speak for anyone else, but summer is the best time to hone my skills, and to show my improvement to the coaches/assignors.

I have the chance to work a summer league for one of the Varisity coaches in the area. He schedules the games and the officials. Hopefully a good summer will lead him to call the assignor for the area and put in a good word for me. You can bet I'll be trying to follow all of the NFHS mechanics. Anything that can get me a leg up sounds like a pretty good idea.

[JRutledge]

Originally Posted by Grail

Can't speak for anyone else, but summer is the best time to hone my skills, and to show my improvement to the coaches/assignors.

I have the chance to work a summer league for one of the Varisity coaches in the area. He schedules the games and the officials. Hopefully a good summer will lead him to call the assignor for the area and put in a good word for me. You can bet I'll be trying to follow all of the NFHS mechanics. Anything that can get me a leg up sounds like a pretty good idea.

Grail,

What you have said applies to many, many officials. Just like in other aspects of life, life is not fair. What a newer official has to do and what a long time established veteran has to do is another story all together. We are all not held to the same standards. I think what many here have tried to convey is not everyone is trying to “work on things” as it relates to mechanics. I am just getting to the point where most of the coaches know who I am or if they do not know, they quickly find out. I have even had some very tense moments during the summer and then they see me working their game in the regular season. I have worked with guys that know everyone whether they are an AD, fan, coaches and players. No one is worried if those guys held their arm up perfectly or used a full hand to call an out of bounds call.

Peace

[zebraman]

Originally Posted by Grail

Can't speak for anyone else, but summer is the best time to hone my skills, and to show my improvement to the coaches/assignors.

I have the chance to work a summer league for one of the Varisity coaches in the area. He schedules the games and the officials. Hopefully a good summer will lead him to call the assignor for the area and put in a good word for me. You can bet I'll be trying to follow all of the NFHS mechanics. Anything that can get me a leg up sounds like a pretty good idea.

I don't need to show anything to coaches or assignors around here. They all know me from experience.

However, I still use the summer to improve. I work on mechanics, positioning, communication....everything I can think of. When I get to state, I need every advantage I can get to compete against our state's best.

Doing everything right, even in the off months will not hurt you. If you have practiced perfection until it has become a habit, then your mechanics (and other facets) won't fall to pieces when the heat gets turned up.

Z

[Rich]

Originally Posted by zebraman

I don't need to show anything to coaches or assignors around here. They all know me from experience.

However, I still use the summer to improve. I work on mechanics, positioning, communication....everything I can think of. When I get to state, I need every advantage I can get to compete against our state's best.

Doing everything right, even in the off months will not hurt you. If you have practiced perfection until it has become a habit, then your mechanics (and other facets) won't fall to pieces when the heat gets turned up.

Z

I agree, and if I worked basketball in the summer, I'd be working to do just what you said.

What I said earlier, though, is the reality everywhere I lived. You'd get offered 5 games or none at all. So you have to decide whether to go all out for 5 games or cut some corners. I don't do this stuff anymore -- summer's baseball season for me. Fall's football season.