Mentoring Programs

[zebraman]

Our association tried this a few years ago. It worked for a few guys - you need mentors who are willing to put in the time to go watch and evaluate the new refs and you need new refs willing to accept constructive criticism. There weren't enough of those partnerships to go around.

One thing that would have helped is to have our assignor ensure that the mentors and the "mentees" get assigned to the same gym. In other words, the mentor works the varsity game at School XYZ and the mentee works the frosh or JV game at the same school. As thin as officials time is stretched during the season, you can't really expect mentors to go watch games on their rare "night off."

Z