Level of Officiating

[fiasco]

Originally Posted by iref4him

My question is - do you beleive that you sometimes officiate to the level of your partner(s)? What do you when he feel yourself going there?

Ugh. Yes. This is one of my biggest struggles.

I've worked with a lot of 1st year guys this year for some reason. I try to use it to my advantage. I think "I'm the most experienced guy out on the floor, I have to take charge."

Not take charge as in start calling everything on the floor, but make sure I'm crisp with my mechanics and making sure to "manage" the game.

Sometimes it works well, but it fell apart for me the other night in a BJV game. My partner made good calls, but his mechanics were very weak, and we were working a game with one of the most annoying coaches in the district. He got under my partner's skin on several occasions (none of which I was aware of until he told me later). I spent too much time worrying about my partner not falling apart that I started looking in his area way too much and stopped focusing on my game.

Toward the end of the game, my partner let the coach rip him a new one and didn't do a thing. I was waiting and waiting for him to issue a technical (which would have been his first) but it never came, so I did it for him.

It was a rough game with several missed calls, a few of them my fault. And I did feel like I went down to his level a bit. But then there are times where I have worked with a varsity guy on a JV game, and man, those have been the best games of my career, so you never know....