3-man Primary and Secondary Area
 

Being relatively new to 3 man mechanics I keep hearing people talking about knowing you primary and secondary areas. I am quite confortable with my primary but cannot find any information regarding secondary areas? Can anyone shed any light for me or am I completely nuts about secondary areas?

The primary area is simply the area of the court which an official is supposed to be looking at if you look in the mechanics manual. The secondary coverage is anywhere outside of that primary coverage area.

Peace

If you are refering to NFHS, the officials manual goes into primary and secondary for both two-man and three-man. It's well illustrated.

Just to expand a little on JRut's answer -

The primary is the "Where should I be watching?" area.

The secondary is the "There's nothing in my area, so where can help out?" area. An example could be if you're the C, and all the players are over in T and L's areas. You could help by watching for illegal screens. Another example could be as T, you could watch for the secondary defender on the post player, while the L is watching the main matchup. The hard part is to not ball-watch, and still trust your partners to make the calls in their areas, but you're helping out because there's nothing specific to watch in your area.

These are just examples, and I'm sure there are more, but hopefully it gives you an idea on the principle.

The NF manual shows primary coverage. They are no illustrations of "secondary" coverage. Secondary coverage is not easily defined and the NF does very little to make the concept of secondary coverage clear. As stated by M&M, anything that is not in your primary coverage is your secondary coverage area.

Peace