First Ever Varsity Action Tonight
 

I'm heading out in about an hour and a half for my first ever high school varsity action. Girls/Boys double-header. I'm pumped, and a bit nervous. I'm supremely confident in my ability to handle this and do well, but at the same time am an inexperienced part of an inexperienced crew. In fact, I'm the most experienced of the three of us - all of us are first-time varsity guys tonight.

Any advice for a varsity first-timer?

First off congrats.

Have a good pregame and go out and have fun. Key being have fun doing the main game for the night.

Completely agree. Allow yourself plenty of time for a good pre-game. Take a deep breath before you go out. Good luck and have fun!

Take time to do a pre-game. And, like tjones said, allow yourself plenty of time for a pre-game. And, like Jerry said, have a good pregame.

Did I mention to have a good pre-game?

And remember it's just like any other game you've done, only different. So, have fun!

And report back to us how it goes!!

I find that varsity calls itself basicly. Good Luck and let us know!

What circumstances resulted in a crew of 3 officials who have never called a varsity game being scheduled to work a varsity doubleheader? This isn't a knock on you or your crew, just curious how and why this could happen...just doesn't sound like a good idea.

Having said that, congrats on your first varsity games...the advice from others above is good. Looking forward to hearing how it went.

Hunt down your assignor and punch him/her in the nose. Part of an assignor's duty is to put people in a position where they have the best possible chance to succeed. Your assignor did not do this. I hope you had a fantastic game and DID succeed, but your assignor needs a serious slap upside the head.

A punch in the nose AND a serious slap upside the head.

Wow.

(btw I agree, minus the senseless violence of course.)

Would a cream pie in the face be better? :)

A little song...a little dance...a little seltzer down your pants

Ok, I'll settle for that. For the assignor. Not for me.

Hell, I'll settle for a cream pie...but not in the face! :)

I figured I'd better report back so you'd all know I survived!

The games went pretty well, IMO. I've always found girls action more difficult to officiate than boys, and that held true for me tonight at the varsity level as well. The crew overall felt good about both games, though admitted that at times the girls game (a 20 point blowout) got pretty ugly at times. Probably let a bit too much contact go on some loose balls and rebounding action, but will continue to improve there.

The boys game was a great game, coming down to the last minute before the visitors pulled away for a 6-point win. We felt very good about the way this one was called, and got very little talk from the coaches. The only thing any of us heard from them was from the visiting coach a bit early when his team was leading the foul count 8-2. Of course, he was full-court pressing with a very aggressive man, and the home team was playing a soft zone.

The biggest struggle was with mechanics. The partner I've worked with a lot and I were on the same page, but were officiating with a guy who hadn't officiated 3-man for several years, so we had challenges on switches. We worked on it at half and between games and were much better in the 2nd game. I was going to take the great advice here and have a pretty thorough pre-game, but this guy didn't arrive until right before the girls game because of work issues.

Anyway, challenges aside I felt we came out unharmed, the games were called fairly, even if not always perfectly, and we learned A LOT about what we can improve on.

Overall a very good first experience, and my regular partner and I are looking forward to Friday when we'll get our next varsity double-header with an experienced, quality ref from the area. Hopefully we'll learn even more.

I was going to answer this in my response above, but figured that post was too long already! I'm not sure how this happened, other than we're very short on experienced officials in this area. We've got a lot of college kids, but very few officials between 25 and 55, I'd say. So, when you're a 30-year old guy willing to put in the extra work and make a commitment to doing it the right way, you can (apparently) get some varsity opportunities pretty quickly.

The third official was experienced (officiated for many years until his son was in high school and then took the last 5 years off) and called a good game, but was not helpful with mechanics as he hadn't done 3-man in about 5 years. My regular partner and I certainly would have loved working with someone who was extremely good with mechanics, as that would have helped, but we made the best of the situtation and it actually challenged me to make sure I was always right so I could help him with the mechancis, and he helped us with calling a good game.

It's certainly unique compared to what I read from a lot of folks on here - I'm in my first year back after several years off, and my 2nd "real" night of the season is a varsity double-header!