Paitent whistle

[Rufus]

This is the hardest thing for me to remember, especially as I get more games called. The tendancy is to think "I know what's going to happen" and call it that way regardless of what actually happens. Situational awareness is a good thing, but not when you start projecting what is going to happen (for the simple reason none of us know what's going to happen). What I've tried to do is let the play come to me rather than going out there and getting (creating?) it.

I also do some public speaking and the one piece of advice I try to remember is that you can't talk slow enough (i.e., no matter how slow you think you're speaking you're really speaking faster). Like Mark mentioned you don't want to be Eyore out there, but you can probably wait a beat before you blow the whistle and be ok.

The interesting thing is that there is a moment in time between when the potential "whistlable" event occurs and when the crowd/coach reacts. Understand and figure that timeline out and you'll have some idea of the amount of time available to you to make the call.

[SAK]

Something that I work on and is helping me is seeing the whole play develop. You get a sense of "does this play need a whistle." Sometimes it does and sometimes it does not. You can always blow the whistle a little bit late. Remember a wise man once said, a late whistle is a great whistle. From what I hear, they have attempted to eliminate the majority of the "and ones" from the college basketball and the trickle down effect is happening for high school games. That means that we need to have more of a patient whistle.

One thing that I did this summer with some of my games was not use my lanyard and keep the whistle in my hand till I thought that need to plow it. Sometimes by the time I got the whistle in my mouth the play had developed and a whistle would have be wrong. Other times I was glad that I waited because it was now a shooting foul rather than a non shooting foul. It did not take long to get the whistle in my mouth but that little bit of time helped to process the play a lot.

Hope it helps.

[Dave Dow]

When I started to referee I was told."You can always put air into a whistle,but you cannot take it out". It helps alot when your standing on the baseline waiting for any action.

[IREFU2]

Good article in this months Referee Mag about this.