Whistle for a sub?

[Rich]

Originally Posted by tomegun

In this case he has knowledge of what the NFHS really wants, he has many years as an official and the instructional chair respects his opinion.

Rich, common sense really has to be a part of what we do in our area because our goal is to improve the product - get in position and call plays correctly. I will be the first to say I care more about communication than things like blowing a whistle on a sub, using two hands to report or using the stop clock mechanic before giving a direction. My question is, does official X communicate well? If the answer is yes, then let's focus more on getting more plays right. I have sat in meetings in three different regions of the country - 5 high school associations. The thing they have in common is that they all have referees who talk a good game, but cannot officiate their way out of a paper bag! My experience tells me that most of those officials want to spend 95% of the time on small details that don't matter and 5% of the time talking about things that will help them call a better game. Plus, we get caught in a culture where we don't have enough engaged officials versus officials who do more harm than good. Will we (Southern Nevada) make huge improvements this season? I don't know, but we are going to try.

I don't disagree with you. I am a firm believer that play-calling is 90% of the deal for officials and I spend most of my time worrying about getting the right position and the right look and the right philosophy to make proper decisions on the court.

That said, why can't officials focus on that *and* get the mechanics right, too?

Last summer I went to a camp where I was told up front that "this is a HS camp, we will use HS mechanics." I hadn't raised my hand 5 times in 3 years before pointing a direction and still got some darned good assignments. I took it as a challenge (and I didn't want to be noticed for something so silly) and didn't miss a single "stop clock" the entire weekend and was *still* noticed (in a positive way) for my play calling.

So while I'm not against what you say, I'll ask again -- why can't officials do both?