Strange Night

[refnrev]

Worked a boys JV game tonight. Partner was a newbie and had only had a couple of JV games. The guy calls everything... I mean everything!!! At one point we had 15 fouls and I'd called 3. At half the 3 guys for V are dressing in the room. They mention that he needs to let some things go.... several times. Second half, faster whistle. At a 60 TO I mosey over and mention that he might want to slow his whistle down and look for an advantage, etc. Must have made him nervous because his whistle speeds up. Game lasts FOREVER...1 hr 40 minutes. I'm walking out afterwards thinking, "I'll never get anything much more here. The AD calls me over and says. I'm a man down, I need you for a V Friday night and to bump you up to boys V next Tuesday." Go figure!

[williebfree]

refnrev:

Always acknowledge a fault. This will throw those in authority off their guard and give you an opportunity to commit more.
-Mark Twain (1835 - 1910)

Timing has been impactful throughout history. Be thankful that you are the beneficiary this time around! Congrats!

[budjones05]

That was the problem with new officials. They are always in a hurry. My association tells the new officials to just slow down. See the play and then call it.

[bigdogrunnin]

Long night here too. Varsity Boys . . . 29 First Half Fouls! 17 on one team, 12 on the other. We were in Double Bonus at the end of the FIRST quarter! I would love to say that we COULD have let a few go, but in every case the fouls were good and solid, some were even borderline intentional. NO questioning their validity. I called SEVEN player control fouls, 5 on one team, 2 on the other. ONE GAME! I have never seen anything like it. Second half was MUCH better. I think we called 7 and 8, respectively. Ended up a 40 point blowout, but still . . .

Amazingly enough, NO ONE fouled out. Yes, it's TRUE!

[SMEngmann]

Originally Posted by refnrev

Worked a boys JV game tonight. Partner was a newbie and had only had a couple of JV games. The guy calls everything... I mean everything!!! At one point we had 15 fouls and I'd called 3. At half the 3 guys for V are dressing in the room. They mention that he needs to let some things go.... several times. Second half, faster whistle. At a 60 TO I mosey over and mention that he might want to slow his whitle down and look for an advantage, etc. Must have made him nervous because his whistle speeds up. Game lasts FOREVER...1 hr 40 minutes. I'm walking out afterwards thinking, "I'll never get anything much more here. The AD calls me over and says. I'm a man down, I need for V Friday night and to bump you up to boys V next Tuesday." Go figure!

In my opinion, this is the best course of action for a newbie, blow the whistle and keep blowing it some more. With game experience, that official will understand better to call more obvious fouls and not call so much marginal contact. The worst type of newbie is one who is gunshy and afraid to blow the whistle as it's easier to tell someone to ease off than it is to tell him/her to call more fouls. I disagree with the approach of telling the official during the game to slow down the whistle or to look for advantage, as this could lead to the guy just going in the tank for the rest of the game. I think the best approach is to talk about philosophy using a couple specific calls after the game, if you truly want to help this official.

[refnrev]

Originally Posted by SMEngmann

In my opinion, this is the best course of action for a newbie, blow the whistle and keep blowing it some more. With game experience, that official will understand better to call more obvious fouls and not call so much marginal contact. The worst type of newbie is one who is gunshy and afraid to blow the whistle as it's easier to tell someone to ease off than it is to tell him/her to call more fouls. I disagree with the approach of telling the official during the game to slow down the whistle or to look for advantage, as this could lead to the guy just going in the tank for the rest of the game. I think the best approach is to talk about philosophy using a couple specific calls after the game, if you truly want to help this official.

_____________________

So let me see if I understand you: You're working maybe your 2nd or 3rd JV level game of your life and four officials with much more experience ranging from 9 - 34 years tell you you're doing it wrong, so you keep doing it? I don't think so.

[Texas Aggie]

this is the best course of action for a newbie, blow the whistle and keep blowing it some more. With game experience, that official will understand better to call more obvious fouls and not call so much marginal contact.

I'm curious: how is the latter a natural result of the former?

I'd tell the guy at half something like, "look, here's the deal: we can get anyone out here to blow a whistle every time there's contact. The reason we have YOU out here is to determine what contact is deemed illegal and what is deemed incidental." Then talk about protecting the shooter and those who have legally gained an advantageous position, etc.

[Chess Ref]

I'm going to fall into the SME camp on this one.

Here's how my learning curve has gone so far in regards to whistle blowing .I am at the beginning of my 3rd year. Doing the JH/sub-varsity circuit.

Year 1 -I had a quiet whistle. I had heard and read all about this mysterious Advantage/Disadvantage. So unless it involved a fracture of some sort I passed. And if I deemed it a hairline fracture well that might get a whistle. Or maybe not.The advantage gained wasn't THAT BIg. So needless to say I didn't call alot........Consequences of that were my games got way out of control, lots of trainwrecks-that I didn't have the skills to fix, and screaming ,upset partners I mean coaches. Alot of the times not so much fun for me.

Year 2 - Starts out the same as Year 1. Varsity ref shows up for one of my JV games. Halftime asks if he could make some comments. His comments were blow that thing. Blow it till hades freezes over. Call everything. Anything and everything gets a whistle. Her ponytail brushes another player tweet. Tweet till your lips hurt.I did that for about 2 weeks. Then I started to learn about ADD/DISadv.

Now I call the obvious and most of the time I can make rational, logical whistles around ADV/DISADv. I am more confident, out of my last 30 games I have had only 1 go sideways on me. Partners and coaches have discussions with me instead of pleading for me to tweet that thing.

So instead of learning Adv/Dis I needed to learn to tweet and then move up the learning curve. The closet analogy I can come up with is I needed to know how to do fractions before trying to solve calculus problems.

I think when officials are starting out they are just blowing whistles . It is a baptism by fire kind of thing......

[Adam]

Personally, I had to go from one extreme to the other before I figured it out. I would argue, though, that I learned more from letting things go than I did from calling everything. Letting things go, you see how the contact affects the play, and you get a better feel for advantage/disadvantage that way. It finally clicked when a coach complained to a tourney director in the middle of my game, saying, "tell them to quit calling this like a college game." I was letting too much go, and I think I've found a pretty good medium since then.

[cropduster]

Originally Posted by Chess Ref

I'm going to fall into the SME camp on this one.

Here's how my learning curve has gone so far in regards to whistle blowing .I am at the beginning of my 3rd year. Doing the JH/sub-varsity circuit.

Year 1 -I had a quiet whistle. I had heard and read all about this mysterious Advantage/Disadvantage. So unless it involved a fracture of some sort I passed. And if I deemed it a hairline fracture well that might get a whistle. Or maybe not.The advantage gained wasn't THAT BIg. So needless to say I didn't call alot........Consequences of that were my games got way out of control, lots of trainwrecks-that I didn't have the skills to fix, and screaming ,upset partners I mean coaches. Alot of the times not so much fun for me.

Year 2 - Starts out the same as Year 1. Varsity ref shows up for one of my JV games. Halftime asks if he could make some comments. His comments were blow that thing. Blow it till hades freezes over. Call everything. Anything and everything gets a whistle. Her ponytail brushes another player tweet. Tweet till your lips hurt.I did that for about 2 weeks. Then I started to learn about ADD/DISadv.

Now I call the obvious and most of the time I can make rational, logical whistles around ADV/DISADv. I am more confident, out of my last 30 games I have had only 1 go sideways on me. Partners and coaches have discussions with me instead of pleading for me to tweet that thing.

So instead of learning Adv/Dis I needed to learn to tweet and then move up the learning curve. The closet analogy I can come up with is I needed to know how to do fractions before trying to solve calculus problems.

I think when officials are starting out they are just blowing whistles . It is a baptism by fire kind of thing......

Pretty good advice. May not be the cure all for every case but I've seen some that it would be a very good "re-start".

barryb

[Old School]

Originally Posted by refnrev

Worked a boys JV game tonight. Partner was a newbie and had only had a couple of JV games. The guy calls everything... I mean everything!!! At one point we had 15 fouls and I'd called 3. At half the 3 guys for V are dressing in the room. They mention that he needs to let some things go.... several times. Second half, faster whistle. At a 60 TO I mosey over and mention that he might want to slow his whistle down and look for an advantage, etc. Must have made him nervous because his whistle speeds up.

Next time this happens, at half time show him Rule 4-27 in your rulebook that you should have with you if you're working high school games.

My bet is he was also calling in your area and watching the ball. So also mix in the conversation at half that he is working too hard. I believe he will be tired from making so many calls that by the end of the game, it will revert back to normal, in fact, you may have to reach into his area to get one or two because he's too tired. Guys that want to call everything, I just let them do all the work. They also get to take all the heat.

[bronco]

Originally Posted by Old School

Next time this happens, at half time show him Rule 4-27 in your rulebook that you should have with you if you're working high school games.

My bet is he was also calling in your area and watching the ball. So also mix in the conversation at half that he is working too hard. I believe he will be tired from making so many calls that by the end of the game, it will revert back to normal, in fact, you may have to reach into his area to get one or two because he's too tired. Guys that want to call everything, I just let them do all the work. They also get to take all the heat.

So you should have only one ref making calls at the start of the game, and the other ref make all the calls at the end of the game because the first ref is tired? So does that mean that you take the heat at the end of the game because you're reaching out of your area?

what does rule 4-27 say verbatim?

[Adam]

Nevada, what's the over/under on this thread getting closed?

[bronco]

I won't post in it anymore, I just couldn't resist.

[LarryS]

I am by no means an old pro at this, but earlier this year I called with a partner who was taking the floor for the 3rd time. His whistle was fast, he called almost everything and I could see the coached were getting frustrated with him during the second quarter.

I took the approach of try to keep myself in a position so that I was at T on the bench side as much as possible. By doing this I was able to keep the coaches a little calm. When they complained about one of his calls, I could say something like "Coach, I didn't see the play but I'll ask him what he saw" or "I saw it in my peripheral and he got it right" or "We'll discuss it when we get a chance". I never hung him out to dry, but by saying something occassionally they stayed fairly calm. That way, he and I could use the dead balls to talk about ADV/DISAD and having a patient whistle. A couple of times when I asked questions, he saw what I was getting at. Late in the third quarter I complimented him for a recent good no call and he said "I always like the official passing on that when I played". Man I jumped at that and suggested he be more patient and call what officials called when he played HS ball. It didn't work completely, but he got better towards the end of the game.

I figure, when working with a guy in that situation about all I can do is talk to him and keep the coaches off him as much as possible...let him work on one thing at a time.