One Person Mechanics ...

[BillyMac]

Originally Posted by JRutledge

My question to you is how does the JV Officials go home without knowing a varsity official has not shown up? The non-varsity officials are coming off the court as you are going onto as a varsity official.
I am also sure that if a state, conference or local association has a policy on how to handle those situations. And in that policy I am sure there are ways to not have all officials go home.

How do the JV officials go home without knowing a varsity official has not shown up? This is a sore subject on our local board. We've always had a unofficial policy on our local board that varsity officials get to the site early to watch at least the second half of the junior varsity game, and the junior varsity officials stay and watch at least the first half of the varsity game. The purpose this is to expose the, usually less experienced, junior varsity officials to a the varsity experience. This also allows the varsity, and junior varsity, officials to discuss any odd situations, or interpretations, that may have occurred in either game, this dialog taking place before the varsity game, or at the varsity game halftime. This unofficial policy also allows for our "double secret" peer rating system.

But, alas, it's an unofficial policy. Sometimes the junior varsity officials have just completed a freshman/junior varsity doubleheader, have been at the site from 3:15 p.m. until 6:45 p.m. and just want to get home, leaving as soon as possible, in uniform, without even taking a shower. In some cases the junior varsity officials want to get out of there as soon as possible to get to their hometown to do a recreation, or travel game (easy money), again leaving, in uniform, without even taking a shower. Sometimes they just leave, no excuse, just walk out the door at the end of their game. We varsity officials can't do anything about this, except giving them a lower rating, because they didn't stay.

Let's forget about back to back games for minute. Let's say that you have a high school freshman game at 3:30 p.m. on a Thursday afternoon, with no other game to follow, and it's 3:20 p.m. and you have no partner. You call your assigner and no one else in the geographic area is available to fill in. What are some mechanics that can be used by a brand new rookie official, the kind that usually do freshman games, in a one person game?

And what about a single game, only two officials at the site, where one of the offcials gets hurt. Shouldn't the remaining official have some type of plan as to how to best do a one person game?

I'm sure that many or us have worked a one person game at one time or another. Instead of discussing why there is no other official, can we please discuss some mechanics that may give that rookie official some help going into that one person game?

It appears that BadNewsRef was correct. I had no idea that this would become a big brouhaha. Really, I didn't have a clue.

Again, I would appreciate any input into these guidelines.