Moving up and down levels

[kbilla]

Originally Posted by hbioteach

I am a 6th year official with 1/2 varsity,1/2 subvarsity schedule. I also work a middle school travel league on off HS days.

Having trouble adjusting to the lower level games. I'm used to calling walks tightly (steps before a rebound is shot, illegal jump stops, changing pivot feet) which is expected at the varsity level. I also apply advantage/disadvantage on rebounds which there is little displacement and rebounder maintains pocession and contact on the dribler who is beating his defender to the basket. My partners with less experience tend to call the rebounding fouls or blocking fouls which I have passed on despite pregame.

I'm getting lip from coaches about the walks.
Any advise. Thanks.

They call their game you call yours, switch on every foul so you aren't always calling one end of the floor....that is partially in jest, but there is only so much that you can do. You can still call advantage/disadvantage on the fouls at the lower levels, but it usually takes a lot less to create an advantage therefore the threshhold tends to slide...I tend to tighten up the violations with each increase in grade level, for instance a travel in 8th grade may not be a travel in 6th grade, and I have no problem saying that to a ms coach....you can pregame all day, but if your partner doesn't have the experience they are going to fall back on what they know - ie. that was contact there must be a foul...we were all there at one point. still a good idea to talk about it though, you should learn something each game you work. as far as the lip from coaches, you are going to get that no matter what you do, I have been calling hs for around 14 years, ms for probably 18 and I get more lip from ms coaches than hs coaches, the hs coaches are just more knowledgable...