Mentoring Programs

[JRutledge]

I think Z makes a great point. It obviously depends on how games are given and what nights are game nights and off nights. I have been around a few associations that tried to have mentors watch games of younger officials in their associations, it can be very difficult. Most offficials have families and job responsibilities and when you do officiate on specific nights, you do not have a lot of time to watch someone else. If an officials does boy's basketball for example, they will be working 3 nights a week (unless tournament). To add to that, many of these officials that are accomplished to college ball too. Soe they might work another night or two doing college games. There is no guarantee that they could even be in the same places to watch any game. And finally if your association is not the entity that assigns games for your officials, then you might never get officials in the same place.

I think you need to come up with a "goal" of what you want to accomplish. If it is for older officials to watch and critque other officials, you might have to work that out with assignors and evaluators to accomplish this. If all you want is to provide and ear to officials to ask questions, that might be much easier to accomplish. It just depends on what the program goals are.

Peace