Growing pains?
 

I'm an experienced, better than avg baseball/softball ump. My ***'n also does basketball and my assignor convinced me to train for it last year at age 56. I had played baseball/softball all my life, so learning to umpire came easily to me. Not so basketball, which I never played.

Did only rec last winter, and made steady progress from MS girls rec to HS boys rec. Now doing school ball, MS, F and JV girls and finding the environment to be very different. As I learned to ref, I began to look for obvious A/D in calling fouls, e.g. displacing body contact, hard arm contact. I then began to look for extended non vertical arms by the D causing contact on a driving ball handler or shooter. I believe I get most of these calls but there is some more subtle stuff that I am probably not getting because I haven't learned to look for it yet.

In some recent games, that have had lopsided scores, I have had coaches of the losing teams chirping at me nonstop for not calling fouls. Never mind that their girls are immobile, can't pass, dribble or protect the ball. This makes it easy for the D to get right on the ball handler, makes for probably a couple dozen held balls/game and numerous scrums on the floor. The situations I'm not calling, if they are truly fouls, they are things I have not yet learned to look for.

The problem is I'm not sure if these situations are incidental contact that should not be called, or if some if it is the more subtle stuff that I need to learn to look for and call. Maybe it's a combination of both.

After having positive umpiring experiences, its a real come down to be chirped at like this. It's not helping me gain confidence; nonetheless, my partners have not told me that they think I am having major problems.

I'm looking for a little feedback. Are these typical growing pains for newbie officials working sloppy blowout games. Would another year of rec be better for me at this stage of development, as there the coaches hardly ever say boo.

BTW, had a couple of better quality closely contested JV games earlier in the year, and didn't have these issues.

Welcome to our world. ;)

Sounds like you're basically okay, but you might feel better if you have an experienced JV girls official watch a game with you, or work with you, to talk about what judgment to exercise.

You're right that better quality games are easier. And that effect is multiplied as you get more confident at the lower quality games. They're rugged, and then a good game just feels great.

Honestly, the coaches at your level have no right to expect you to give them a call every now and then when they are getting blown out. Sadly they have also not learned that it's far better to sit there and take their beating than to get on the refs, and that's mostly because the refs at your level don't know how to handle this. So here's some advice: just blow your whistle and T them up. Go ahead and try it, you might like the results.

It has been my experience that [generally] A/D is better used for boys, men and women, than it is for girls. Call a different (less acceptable contact) game for girls.
I dunno why, just seems that way.

Experienced JV official? Around here that's an oxymoron or I could be polite and just refer to them as "lifers."