What topics have your associations presented?
 

I am looking for topics that your association has had presented at meetings in the past. I have many ideas but I am looking for topics that might be interesting or unusual. I know we got a lot of interesting topics here, but might not be appropriate in a meeting setting.

Also if you can tell me how these were presented that would help too.

Looking forward to answers.

Peace

Meeting Topic ...
 

Last season, at our first meeting after the new rules meeting, our interpreter had two highly regarded high school coaches, one male, the coach of a boys team, and one female, the coach of a girls team, speak to us and tell us what they expected from officials doing their games, and what some of their "pet peeves" were.

Given all the very interesting and strange endings of games that seem to keep coming up, this year I will be talking about handling the last few minutes of a game and the importance of being ready for as many of them as possible. Not getting surprised by "gimmick" plays, defensive tactics to get the ball back, etc.

Did they let the officials tell the coaches what their pet peeves were in regards to coaches as well? It would only be fair.

I remember being at association meeting and they had couple of coaches give talks and one was just the basic stuff and he asked some questions. The other guy I thought was basically telling the refs how he wanted things and he really just used the meeting to get on the refs good side. After that I thought no way should coaches be allowed to give talks to refs in those types of meetings

I've been in several meetings with coaches as speakers and bringing in active coaches, in my opinion, is counterproductive. Usually, one side or the other misunderstands and then other coaches want to get in on it because they want their face time, influence time, or whatever. We had a big problem with this in a smaller chapter I worked in a while back. A coach came in; many of the officials thought he was there to tell us how to call his games; other coaches heard about it and demanded a time for them to come to our meeting, etc. Earlier this year, another coach came to our football meeting and a lot of guys just tuned him out. His presentation was weird, to say the least. Coaches are good at motivation and sometimes at general speaking, but rarely are they informative.

On the other hand, I'm a big believer that hearing from coaches does help, so I'd suggest retired coaches or ADs. They don't have the daily pressure and now have some perspective to take a look at what happened on the court/field and can be more instructive.

As far as other topics, one thing we did one year in a meeting after a big fight in a game the week before was to split up into groups of 3 and go over scenarios like we were working the game. This helped me get the fighting, flagrant foul, free throw, and ejection rules clear in my mind by actually applying them since we don't do that very often. You don't have to do fighting, but pick a topic area that's important but doesn't happen much and work through that process. Its also more fun for the officials than sitting around listening to lectures.

That depends on the speaker. I have heard some official presentations that were riveting. Others that made me count the time before it was over.

Our association has several meetings throughout the season, one of which is a rules meeting which is separate from the state rules meeting we have to attend. A couple of years ago they got ahold of some restaurant gift cards and handed them out as prizes during a "quiz" session on rules and mechanics.

We had a couple collegiate coaches and one renowned high school coach have an "open table discussion" with us during one of my college camps this summer. It was quite hilarious because they didn't know we were basically told to listen and after they left we would be told "what they really meant". The head of the camp was hilarious. The coaches left and he pointed out everything he felt they really meant during the 30 minute discussion. It was productive but not because you could take the literal meaning of what the coaches were actually saying.

-Josh

I am not a big fan of coach's forums unless they are really regulated. I honestly do not care what coaches think. I already know what coaches think to some extent and those discussions tend to get into a ***** session. Those tend to get out of hand with war stories and the younger to average official gets little to nothing out of session. I would rather have an experienced official talk about what to say or do with coaches than a coach that only has limited experience. Experienced officials in my opinion work more games and see more different things than most coaches. I just do not like those discussions and where they often lead to.

Peace

Our board typically opens with discussion about what we've seen and we have a typically productive Q&A with our interpreter. Discussion then moves to other areas of common concern.

Our board coavers the most populated area in our state so we see a lot of different situations depending on where we come from, leagues we work, etc. We also have more officials than any other board so we have more situations to pull from.

Probably the best topic we ever had was in regards to what to do when game situations get out of control (due to circumstances beyond our control).

The only topics that I remember that are different than those posted are crew-of-three positioning and mechanics and free throw positioning and mechanics. The first was done with a demonstration on the court and then officials rotating into crew of three and officiating a rec league pick-up game. The second was an on-court demonstration and the opportunity for each official to be in each position during a make-believe free throw. The three whistle was a couple of years ago when such assignments started to become more common. The free three presentation was because positioning was becoming inconsistent and a bit of a problem within the local board.