My officials won't blow their whistle
 

Any advice on how to encourage my youth basketball officials to blow their whistles? I have a few that are a little bit gun shy.

Pay them a per-foul rate?



Didn't say you wanted good advice. :)

Organize a scrimmage where the players are going to work on having absolutely no contact. Tell the refs that they must blow the whistle on any contact at all. It's good for both players and refs.

What level of youth are we talking about...I am on a board for a local rec league that runs grades 3-8...as a ref, I spend 90% of my on court time officiating 5th-8th grade (rec and competitive league/AAU type level) with the occassional off season 16U AAU games...

Lower the level, the harder it is to call because there is so much you can call... My reallity with the lower level is that contact is A-B-C or D All of the above when it comes to fouls...

There are two schools of thought here. Call it if it happens, they need to learn the game and let some stuff go so they can enjoy the game. .the kids just are not understanding and coordinated sometimes to avoid contact and we can blow the whistle just about every trip down the floor at both ends...

When doing the younger kids 5th and lower for rec....I know I have far more tolerance for minor travels/shuffling of the feet...we tend to let a lot of perimeter contact go as incidental unless it really disrupts the dribbler and on shots, we call it pretty tight.

I can't tell if you're serious or not...

Which would you prefer?

Thank you.

Dan...you owe me a new monitor! HAHAHA! :D

Cute, Dan, real cute.

Tell them if they don’t get their heads out of their collective azzes, you'll bring in volunteer parents.
Tell them to eat before they come to the game so they don’t have to swallow their whistles during the game.
If you think the pressure is too much for them, have a group therapy session and discuss empathy or something.

Seriously, maybe get out there and ref a game with each of them. Do it three whistle, if you want. Get together with them during timeouts and intermissions to discuss individual plays. It might be that officiating isn't for them, who knows.

Well, seriously, of course officials shouldn't be blowing the whistle on any or all contact, but doing an exercise like this helps get them quickly through that not-blowing-the-whistle-enough stage of development. It only takes a few minutes of this for an official to learn to be unafraid of the sound of the whistle and to learn to look for contact. Then they can start to judge what to call and what not to.

Unless there are some girls, in which case use three whistle.

I've corrected the original, and will sentence myself (note the correct usage) to diet soda the rest of the day.

Most new officials have this problem due to the fact that they cant seem to tell what a foul may or may not be. The best thing to do is get them in a scrimmage and have an official run with them and tell them to blow the whistle. Once they get use to the contact, then they will be sort of comfortable. This is what was done for me when I got started. Have then just concentrate on blowing the whistle and nothing else. Just my 2 cents worth.

That's a little harsh. But, btw, how much pop do you drink in a day? Maybe to make the game better I"ll impose a sentence of just less total pop. You'll get the advantages to your health as well as your vocabulary.