OK - I admit it. Reffing is much harder than I thought it would be.

[Back In The Saddle]

RE: Signals

Get in front of a mirror. Practice all of your signals regularly. Practice the whole sequence of arm up (fist or palm, as appropriate) followed by the foul prelim (assuming one is common in your area) or violation followed by the disposition. Practice your table reporting mechanics too. Run through all the numbers, all the fouls, pointing, etc. Practice making that funny T shape as well, practice making it look cool, calm, detached, just another foul-like.

This does a couple of things. First, if you'll work through the entire sequence, it helps build the muscle memory and proper habits that will allow you to get past having to think about this. It'll just become automatic. Second, it gives you a chance to see what you look like, and make adjustments until you look good with all the signals.

Practice all this regularly. I still do it regularly when I hit the mens room at work.

[Back In The Saddle]

As for the rest...

First of all, keep working on all of it. Developing good habits early on will benefit you in the long run.

However, my experience (both personally and from working with other new officials) is that when you're starting out, the game comes at you really fast. But there are a few things that can help you right away, and some that will help you down the road.

Right away, two things you can do to slow the game down are to maintain proper distance from the play and to narrow your focus. An awful lot happens in the paint, and at lead at times it's all coming right at you, at 90 miles and hour, and larger than life. As has been pointed out already, get a couple of steps off the end line. If you don't have room to get deep, then get wide. This will give you a wider view, which is important in seeing the whole play, etc. But it also tends to slow it all down a bit and make it seem "smaller" and easier to take in.

You also need to narrow your focus. When starting out, we have a tendency to want to watch everything, to not miss anything. But the only realistic way to do this is divide up "the action" between partners and for each partner to watch just his portion. Only having to watch part of the area, or more importantly, part of the players helps slow the game down and make it more manageable. I know some guys who actually imagine the different areas on the floor being different colors, and that helps them "watch their area" better. That's never worked for me.

What works for me is watching matchups. (Nearly) Everything interesting that happens in the game happens in a matchup. So pick up the two, or possibly three, closest matchups and make those your focus. If the ball is in your area, that is your primary matchup. But also know where your secondary matchups are and keep an eye on them. Those are mostly likely to be where the play is going. Work to keep an open look between the players in your primary matchup, and as much as possible in your secondary matchup too. If you can focus on just four players, the game slows down, you're more likely to see the whole play, and it all becomes more manageable.

The stuff that will help you down the road has to do with developing good habits now. As you do this, parts of what we do begin to become second nature, they become habits. When they become second nature, we don't have to think about them (much) any more. That frees up our limited brain power to focus on other things. We're able to do more, and take in more, because we've got our conscious and subconscious minds both working on various parts of "the problem."

Just as an example, take administering a throw-in. It's a simple thing, right? Until you start thinking about it. You've got to make eye contact with your partner(s), ensure the player is fully oob and on/over the spot, communicate to the thrower that he has a spot (or that he can run), notice whether he's got a defender "in his face", and if so communicate to the defender not to reach through the boundary, deliver the ball to the thrower, get your non-counting hand up with the hand open, back off a step or two, begin your count, keep and eye on the thrower to make sure he doesn't violate, keep an eye on that defender to make sure he doesn't reach through, and then somehow keep an eye on the other players in the vicinity of the thrower to ensure no illegal contact occurs. Oh, and if the defense puts a lot of pressure on, then you need to be aware of a possible time out request.

So not much, right?

But with a little time, a lot of this becomes automatic. Eye contact with partner(s)? Automatic. Ensuring the thrower is on his spot and communicating with the thrower and nearest defender? Automatic. Delivering the ball, unless you're handing it to the thrower, this one isn't really automatic. But hand up, proper distance, and counting...that becomes automatic. Watching the thrower? You learn to do that out of the corner of your eye, and to not focus on him. You learn to spend most of your "cycles" watching the action in the vacinity of the thrower. More specifically you're watching for teammates cutting to get open to ensure they're not being held, and watching for teammates screening to ensure the screens are legal. And the time out request, you learn to sense when that's coming.

Most of the mundane details just become automatic, and the conscious stuff, well you learn what specifically to watch for and when.

Keep up the great work, and before you know it the new kids will be asking you how you manage to see everything.