New Official

[jmkbball]

Good luck on starting out….have fun and enjoy it.

In Houston, you can register with the chapter at Houstonref.com. That may be the best way to find either AAU or summer league games over the summer. Each chapter is somewhat different but the Houston chapter may want you to register -- call them and find out. The Austin chapter regularly sends out requests to its base for the various summer programs and I think most, always need officials.

If you are a sure about moving to Austin prior to September, you might wait until then to formally join the chapter and the association – there may be a redundancy in fees that won’t transfer. In fact, the state association, it seems that TASO is being recreated into a new version to oversee basketball in Texas and I’m not sure all the questions have been ironed out. In Austin, I believe that as a first year, some of your initial fees are either discounted or waived (Houston may offer the same benefit).

Access the Austin chapter online at www.basketball officials.com. Go there and you can search thru a directory of information, camps and such. You might want to consider a camp but do a little research before going. A number of those may not necessarily be best for brand new officials or have enough clinicians to really help you.

In Austin, the assignment secretary is a good guy…contact him at [email protected]. Tell him of your plans and he may have some additional ideas to help.

One other thing...for the past several years, Austin has had an arrangement with an August/September league in nearby Pflugerville. The chapter runs training sessions at those games and you really should make every one of those you can. There will be senior officials nearby and they'll work with you before, during and after each 4, 8 or 10 minute ref session. It will really help you and you'll begin meeting other folks in the chapter.