College Officiating
 

Fellow Officials. How does a season High School Basketball Official get registerd to do College Basketball. Interested in Division 2 and below. Currently interested in Michigan, Ohio and Indiana small colleges.

Generally you go to camps where these assignors are present, many times the camp is run by the assignor. You then work games at the camp as if you were trying out. Simple as that.

Keep in mind, it isn't a "registration." It is a tryout and an official must get hired.

As stated before there is no such thing as "registration" to work college sports of any kind that I am aware of. What you need to do is look at the college conferences that are around you. See how far you are willing to travel, which might be across a couple of states for a single conference. Contact the conference assignment chairperson and ask them directly what you need to do. In most cases you will have to attend a camp they will be at or a camp they might run.

Also understand that getting hired in college basketball is a very subjective thing. Usually you are not going to get hired in a Division 2 without having some JUCO and Division 3 experience. Also you might not be near a Division 2 conference, but you might be surrounded by a few JUCO conferences and traveling 4 hours might be a reality to work a single game.

Here is also the dirty little secret of basketball officiating. You will not likely work both Men's and Women's college. You will have to choose and commit yourself to one or the other. The mechanics are different, many of the rules are different and the officiating philosophies are very different. So if you are not yet working college basketball you might be able to go to both a Men's and Women's camp, just understand that it will be an adjustment to go back and forth.

Peace

It also helps if you have someone that already works in that conference talking to the assignor about you. If you are already in their mind, it helps to get picked up.

The best way I can think of to get started in college is to find an official in your local association who already works NCAA and ask them who you need to contact to get application materials (either for an association or for a try-out). When I started the process, it was basically b/c an NCAA official in my local association handed me the application form and said, "Fill this out." Otherwise, I wouldn't have had any idea how to go about it. Good luck!

Hey... Chuck is back! We are all waiting for Camp stories!