officials

[Doug]

I just got back from a grade school basketball game. The officials were using mechanics that I have never seen before. Where are they from?

One, on an out of bounds play, they would verbally count (one, two, three, ect). on jump balls, they would just raise their hands up. instead of bouncing the ball to a player, on the side, from underneath the basket, they stood by the player and after the ball was in play, they would walk to be the lead again.

oh, and i got a kick out of this one. A1 is dribbling up the court, ball is knocked and fought over and goes out of bounds. the ball went out of bounds about 2 feet from teh lead official (about 1/2 way inbetween 1/2 court and under the basket), he blows his whistle, stops, and extends both arms above his head like he was making a Y. Says very loudly, "i don't know" when it was right there! then, his partner comes forth, and she states that it was last touched by blue so it is maroon ball( also, they used blue and maroon not red, MAROON!, when they yelled the colors it was impossible to tell the difference) she was all the way on the other side, through players, adn didn't have a clue because maroon touched the ball last, and neither of them saw it. they didn't use the alterante poss. she guessed.

blue lost because the ball was given back to maroon and they scored and won. this is just beyond me, but where did this other stuff come from, is it old mechanics, or what. I kind of like the idea of counting, but it isn't nfhs, so i won't do it. curious for feedback

[Edited by Doug on Jan 18th, 2002 at 10:13 PM]

[Peter Devana]

Sounds to me that these officials were simply untrained volunteers.
I remember prior,to becoming a registered official and after playing many years of basketball , that THOUGHT I knew how to ref and I often volunteered to officiate those types of games when asked. After I learned how to officiate correctly I was embarassed when I thought back to what I had got away with in my AMATEUR days!!! I venture to say that many of us experienced the same thing if we are willing to admit it!!
Pistol

[Paul LeBoutillier]

I'm a third year state certified official and do public games but also volunteer my time to work private school games which often feature WHOEVER happens to want to ref. These folks are willing but usually very "green." We try to work with them on proper calls and mechanics, and fortunately things are improving. We've even had a coaches and ref's meeting to start the season. (The coaches are volunteers as well.)

Organizations that are using volunteer coaches and refs would do good, like ours has, to get one to three certified ref's to come on board to help train and encourage the volunteers. (We've even had some volunteers want to get certified because of it.)

[zebraman]

Sounds like the organization doesn't have the budget to hire association refs to they hire volunteers who haven't been trained. If you mean 1st through 5th grade, I think volunteers are quite appropriate and you should give them a break.

Even if they missed a lot of calls, I doubt they did it so unevenly to cause one team to win or lose. Remember to think like a ref, not a fan, even when you are watching a game.

Z

[Doug]

I posted because I am wondering where these mechanics came from, were they used in the past? were used in the nfhs at one point, because I liked some of them.