Made it through my first scrimmage today (man, that's a relief) and I have my first question: How do you adjust to your partner's style of calling?

I called with three different veteran officals during the scrimmage. The first called a high percentage of violations/fouls, the second called a medium to high number and the third was a "no blood, no foul" official. I was pretty comfortable with the first two, but wasn't with the third. I felt like the quarter got out of control (boy's varsity, both good teams and physical play), but I didn't want to be calling a different game from my co.

I need some suggestions on how to deal with this from some of the veterans on the board. Thanks in advance for the help.

You cannot worry about that.
 

Just call you game. Do not try to "mirror" or adjust your game to other officials. You will find yourself calling things that are not there, or you could have passed on. If the assignor put you there, you should just try to call what you see. Most importantly, if you are calling your own game or working your primary, you will not be able to know or understand every call your partner makes. Just call your game and discuss at halftime or during timeouts what each of you are seeing. But do not just call something because you partner made that call. You partner might be wrong. Then you will be wrong by making another call that "mirrors" them.

Peace

A lot is confidence. Do you have the confidence to call the game the way it is being called. If you don't like the way it is called, take a deep breath and blow on that little black thing in your mouth. Know what you will call a foul on and what you won't. It is not a matter of the partner calling or not calling. That is why we switch on fouls. So you both have a chance to make calls. Each game is different. I sometimes tell the captains, "We will call the game as it is played. If you play basketball and make an effort to put on a good show, we won't interupt the game. If you decide you want to play rough, then so will we. We can blow the whistle all night long if that is what you want."

I have called games that have a total of 10 fouls and I have called games that have a total of 60 fouls. It is all a matter of the game being played that night. My partner has nothing to do with it. He is my partner and we talk during the game. We get on the same page and we know what we are looking at. If we have a problem, we address it. If the game is going well, we pat ourselves on the back and we don't spoil a good game. As veteran, I am responsible to make sure that we do talk. As the non veteran, I ask questions of the veteran. I want to talk during timeouts and at halftime and find out what we are doing right and wrong. Should we tighten, should we loosen our calls? Is it right? As you gain experience, you gain confidence on how you handle the game. You will become more adept at finding the right feel for the game. Have a good season.

I agree that you should concentrate on calling your own game and not adjust to fit your partner. I think the main problem is when you get the "no blood, no foul" guy you must resist the urge to call the whole game yourself. If you reach across the court to make a call that is blatantly wrong, you will catch even more heat than he will for calling nothing. The line that goes through my mind in this case is: "I think that was a foul, but if he can't call it from there, I sure can't call it from here."

It should not matter one bit what kind of foul your partner is calling or not calling. You could have the official that calls everything imaginable and you still have the same problem. Just call your own game. It will be apparant who belongs and who does not. Coaches will know who belongs (at least good ones) and will not necessarily hold it against the officials that are doing there job. Despite what many would like to admit, coaches at many levels have great influence over what happens to an official's career. If the coaches like what you do, there is not a whole lot that can hold you back. If the coaches hate you, it can make that rise a very short one. And if you call a game just to mirror a weak official, you might get lumped into that description.

Peace

Ever hear of consistency amongst the crew during a game? The lack of consistency is a bigger problem to coaches than whether or not the game is called loose or tight. They, and the players, have the right to expect the same kind of game to be called by the entire crew. While some of our "esteemed bretheren" here will disagree with this, the crew must be willing to make compromises in order to let the game be played on a level scale.

Some nights you may be the official out of synch that needs to adjust...some nights it may be a partner. This needs to be addressed and corrected...hopefully before half time. If not, then you think you are bigger than the game. If that is the case, maybe you should look for some other way to spend your "avocation" time, since the game will be here long after you, me, or anyone else has gone to greener pastures.

I accept the premise of crew consistency. We try to do that in football as well. My question for that would be, as a green, rookie official, how do I tell an experienced partner that they need to call a tighter game. I don't want to get the reputation as a "know it all", but I also want the game to be safe and under control.

The other option is to call what I believe is my game and risk the perceptions that go along with calling a disproportionate number of fouls.

I am just trying to get a feel for the best, most professional way to handle a situation that I know will come up again. It was very uncomfortable to be caught off guard, I would like to try to mitigate that feeling by knowing how to approach it. Above all, I want to do a good job.

Consistency? I am suppose to make up calls for the effort of consistnecy? So if my partner makes a handcheck call and another player does not make a handcheck, I am suppose to call something in the effort of consistency. I have heard of some strange things, but this almost takes the cake. If you or any official is making calls that are totally wrong, it is not my job to match them. If I can tell why every call is being made what the heck am I doing? I have been doing 3 Person games for nearly 7 years. If I have learned anything is to trust your partner and to stay in your primary. If I am staying in my primary, I will not see all my partner's calls at all. Better yet, if I would have done what you suggest in my Men's college game yesterday aftenoon, I would have missed more than half the game. They move so fast and things are happening every split second, I could not affort to "match" my partner. I assume that the assignors think they are qualified to be there. I think I need to trust their call, just like I would expect them to do the same.


I have worked for a lot of different assignors. I have have been to many different camps. I have worked with guys that are at the D1 level all the way down to the State Finals level, and I have never had any of those officials suggest doing any such thing. So I will conclude from that and that alone that no one in their right mind would suggest doing such a thing. If officials that are much more successful than I am are not suggesting doing something like this, than I can assume that they reached those levels not doing anything like this in the name of the almighty "consistency."

Funny how someone can tell me what works. But I guess that is why you are the bigwhistle.

Peace

You will be fine.
 

This is why we go to camps. This is why you read up on the rules. This is why we watch other officials work. And this is why we go to and join association meetings. You learn from other officials how to call the game and what to call and what not to call. You start calling things just to mirror other officials that you are working with, instead of the coaches and evaluators saying, "official A is not good," they will say, "this crew is not good." I believe in consistency, but consistency is better served when you try to be consistent yourself first. If you are that worried about consistency as a crew, find guys that you only want to work with. Other than that, have a good pregame. Figure out what the other guys call, but to adjust on the court might be too late. I have done many 3 Person games and there are games when one official is calling everything or one official is not a factor. That comes with the territory. There are many times that in a 3 Person game that nothing happens in one official's primary. Just work hard and call your own game.

Peace

[The other option is to call what I believe is my game and risk the perceptions that go along with calling a disproportionate number of fouls.




Disproportionate to what? Each trip down the floor must stand on its own. Proportions of fouls are things that coaches worry about.



[Edited by just another ref on Nov 10th, 2002 at 11:36 PM]

They are not the only ones.
 

That is not entirely true. At least it depends on the kind of game. Many times you do not want to call things that do not need to be called. Evaluators will often time give officials credit for things they do not call as well as the things that they do call. I agree that every trip has its own identity, but you can put yourself in the game when it is not needed by making too many calls. You also can sometimes not put yourself in the game enough.

Peace

Re: They are not the only ones.
 

That is not entirely true. At least it depends on the kind of game. Many times you do not want to call things that do not need to be called. Evaluators will often time give officials credit for things they do not call as well as the things that they do call. I agree that every trip has its own identity, but you can put yourself in the game when it is not needed by making too many calls. You also can sometimes not put yourself in the game enough.

Peace [/B][/QUOTE]


It definitely depends on the kind of game. One can certainly make too many calls or not enough calls. But with regard to proportions, I just mean:

1. If team fouls are 12 to 2, don't let that make you look harder for foul #3.
2. If you have called 4 fouls while never leaving one end of the floor, don't let that make you sit on the 5th one.
3. If you know a player has 4 fouls, don't look for the 5th, but don't look at the ceiling to avoid the fifth.
4. etc.

Re: Re: They are not the only ones.
 

I totally agree with that. But that is why in my opinion you have to just call your game. You never want to just avoid making a call because it might not go over well, but you also do not want to go looking for things that are not present either. That is why you have to call your own game.

Peace

There is sometimes an adjustment in the other direction.

Situation: 8th grade girls game, middle of 3rd quarter

Team A 43 Team B 7.....Team B's point guard has been called for traveling 19 times. On the 20th time and for the remainder of the game it is acceptable to allow her an extra half step or 3 while chanting to oneself "There's no
place like home, run clock, run."

In your situation as a rookie. You will be calling Junior high games that will be a lot tougher to call then the varsity games you just worked. At the varsity level there is an expected level of consistancy in the officiating. There is a consistancy in the play of the players. At the Junior high level things can be different. For example. I had one night where traveling was not called all night. Was traveling there, you bet. But for the sake of consistancy we set the criteria at four steps before we called anything. This kept the flow of the game going and the coaches did not have a problem with it. If we had lived on that standard for a varsity game, we would have been booed to the other end of the state. The thing is you must communicate with your partners as to what is and what isn't exceptible tonight.

Mr. Rookie,

Welcome to basketball and good luck. It's unfortunate that there exists such a disparate cornucopia of opinion. Let me attempt to clarify the issue for you while trying to keep my ego in tact.

While it's certainly true that you need to stay in your primary and concentrate on the business in front of you, it is likewise true that a PC/block call at one end needs to be the same at the other end. Hopefully you and your crew has pre-gamed the type of consistency you will have that night. This helps tremendously.

If your partner kicks a call, should you then kick one b/c of that...of course not. There are certain critical calls that have to be consistent for the game to run smoothly...b/c, illegal picks, hand checks, etc.). Talk about those situations in your pre-game and try to apply that to your game. Establish the critical calls early so you don't have to "make it up" in the last two minutes.

If your partner doesn't want to officiate the ball game, then I would agree you still have to take care of business in your primary. But don't confuse a no blood no foul with advantage/disadvantage and a patient whistle. It will be tough for a while, but it gets better!

I'm surprised that one topic doesn't seem to have been emphasized on this thread---pregame!

I'm still working lower levels, so I haven't had many opportunities for extensive pregame talks with my partners, but the talks I've had have helped with consistency. At the lower levels, I like to go easy on travels but call fouls tight. It helps a lot to go over this with my P before the game starts.

However, as Rut pointed out, once I'm on the floor, I'm trying very hard to <b>not</b> focus on my P's calls. I'm concentrating on my game and trying to do my best. I've got to trust my P to do his/her best.

[QUOTE]Originally posted by JRutledge

Quote:

Consistency? I am suppose to make up calls for the effort of consistnecy? So if my partner makes a handcheck call and another player does not make a handcheck, I am suppose to call something in the effort of consistency.

Nowhere did I say that calls should be made if they are not there. What I did say was that being consistent within the crew is necessary. Apparently you have no idea what that means. I will not waste my typing to explain it to you, since you have consistently shown an unwillingness to ever take positive criticism to anything said on this board and possibly apply it to your games. Now I do realize that you will make a very long post trying to justify how great things are in Illinois and that you hobnob with bigdogs.

Quote:

I have worked for a lot of different assignors. I have have been to many different camps. I have worked with guys that are at the D1 level all the way down to the State Finals level, and I have never had any of those officials suggest doing any such thing. So I will conclude from that and that alone that no one in their right mind would suggest doing such a thing. If officials that are much more successful than I am are not suggesting doing something like this, than I can assume that they reached those levels not doing anything like this in the name of the almighty "consistency."

It occurs to me that you are probably not listening to what the experienced officials you work with are saying. If you don't believe that consistency is a part of the good crew's game, so be it.

I think I need to be a little more clear when I ask about "consistency." By consistency, I mean that the criteria we are using to make our decisions on what fouls/violations to call and what to let slide. I don't care if one team has 12 fouls and one has 2. If that's what is happening, then that is what I call. But if I am calling hand check fouls and my partner is not, then that is not consistent and I want to avoid that situation.

I think (maybe a bad idea to be thinking) that the best idea is to set expectations before the game as to how it will be called and then adjust accordingly. Then call what I see and not worry about what my partner is calling. Is that a strategy that seems to work?

I had a similar situation on Friday night. JUCO game, one partner in the league for several years the other's very first college game. Rookie has 3-4 travel calls in 1st half, I had one and #3 has none. At halftime (I'm the R), I ask my crew if we are on the same page with travels. Are we seeing the same plays the same ways? I wasn't pointing a finger at the rookie or at the vets, but I wanted to make wure that we saw the same thing and ruled on it the same way. Second half, the rook has 3-4 more travels and the other 2 of us had none. After the game we talked about what happened with travel calls and we all felt good about our individaul calls (or no calls). Moral of the story...I'm not sure what it is. We tried to make sure we were doing the same things, but to the average observer, I'm sure it appeared like only one of us had a clue what the travel signal was. Do what you can, but make sure you get your calls right.

Trust your partner
 

[QUOTE]Originally posted by bigwhistle


Nowhere did I say that calls should be made if they are not there. What I did say was that being consistent within the crew is necessary. Apparently you have no idea what that means. I will not waste my typing to explain it to you, since you have consistently shown an unwillingness to ever take positive criticism to anything said on this board and possibly apply it to your games. Now I do realize that you will make a very long post trying to justify how great things are in Illinois and that you hobnob with bigdogs.

[QUOTE]

If it is a travel, you call a travel? If it is out of bounds you call it out of bounds? So what you are telling me, is that if an official misses a travel, you go to the other end or do not call a travel if it took place under the rules? So I throw out the rulebook in order to be "consistent" with my partner? So I guess when my partner is totally wrong in making a call, I have to strive to be equally as wrong? Interesting, I have not heard that before.

Considering that I am a veteran, I do not spend my time telling other veterans how to call the game and they certainly do not spend that kind of time an energy doing that with me. Not expected by our assignors at the college nor HS levels. Not expected by our fellow officials. If you cannot be consistent, you will not be there. Consistency starts with you. It is called trusting your partner.

Peace

Pregame does help us get on the same page and focus in on
what we're about to do. But IMO you're making a mistake
by not paying attention to what your partner is calling
and not calling. There's nothing wrong with getting
together during timeouts and going over things like how
the game is progressing, how well we're sticking to our
game plan discussed in pregame or even how we should adjust
from our plan, go over calls/no calls that were not so
routine, where trouble might be brewing, general court
coverage, etc etc. Kinda hard to do this if you're not
paying attention to your partner.

By and large, that should be the bottom line. Call what you see.

In terms of fouls, you have to call what you see, you can't make up for your partners mistakes. I think what people are talking about when they talk about consistency are more along the lines of violations. Are you both going to call hand checks, are you both going to call the offense for using their forearm to guard the ball, are you both going to call the carry the same way? Those types of things need to be consistant or you are putting teams at a very big disadvantage by not letting them know what they can and cannot do.

The only foul situation that I would see needs consistency would be the charge or player control fouls. There are still some refs out there that won't call a charge or pcf under the basket, some will. That is something that needs to be consistant so player know where they can set up to get that call. They shouldn't have to look back to see which ref is back before they set up.

Hmmmmm :confused:

In terms of fouls, you have to call what you see, you can't make up for your partners mistakes. I think what people are talking about when they talk about consistency are more along the lines of violations. Are you both going to call hand checks, are you both going to call the offense for using their forearm to guard the ball, are you both going to call the carry the same way? Those types of things need to be consistant or you are putting teams at a very big disadvantage by not letting them know what they can and cannot do.

The only foul situation that I would see needs consistency would be the charge or player control fouls. There are still some refs out there that won't call a charge or pcf under the basket, some will. That is something that needs to be consistant so player know where they can set up to get that call. They shouldn't have to look back to see which ref is back before they set up.

I don't think that clarifies what you said in your previous post :)

Chuck

Along with my refereeing I'm also playing in a 4-team Juvenile (16-17 yrs) house league that's just a step above pickup. Our league is not exactly high-priority when it comes to getting refs so usually I'll ref the game I'm not playing in, with a teammate, and the game I play in will be reffed by an older but inexperienced official and another high-school kid that's had a couple years of experience or an experienced ref that's also a coach and the same high-school kid. The first crew usually refrains from blowing the whistle unless there is a painfully obvious foul. The second crew is dominated by the experienced official who will call the game tightly. While the league is not particularly serious the talent level is quite high (most partcipants play high school ball at either varsity or JV level) and the competetive juices get flowing. We can adjust to either style of play with little complaint, the only problems occur when there's a crash under one basket with no call from the young official and then a little bump is penalized at the other end or an obvious travel is ignored at one end and a little pivot foot slide gets called at the other end. Consistency does matter. The game is for the players, they expect and deserve some consistency especially with respect to violations. If you polled 100 players, I would be willing to bet that 95% would care more about consistency and less about the relative tightness or looseness of the calls. That should be the only opinion that matters.

You have me a little confused (which some say is easy to do). You say
Are you saying these are not fouls. I think those are two examples of fouls you have to get right and be consistent.

yeah...I messed up the terminology on those. My bad. I was thinking of traveling and cary's and those types of things and those two popped into my head as things I've seen problems with.

[Edited by gsf23 on Nov 13th, 2002 at 08:54 AM]

I still do not see how you can do this?
 

I have no problem with calling the same game if you can, but all these thing you gave as an example, can easily not be seen by partners. In a 3 Person game, I might not know why my partner called what he or she did on a travel. It would not be for me the next time to just look for a travel when I get a chance, especially when one did not take place. The same for a handcheck. Usually the same player might be doing the traveling or carries and if they are doing it call it. But it does not mean that both teams are doing the same thing. One team might be better coached than the other. You do not want to penalize a team that their actions are completely within the rules. Do this does not make you consistent. Being consistent is calling the game as it happens. And if one player travels, you get the next kid that travels, regardless of team or who did it. It is not uncommon to have two teams playing two different styles of games. You might not have the same block/charge calls with a team playing a Man to Man Defense and the other playing Zone.

Peace

Alright...I'll try again..

Let's say that one official is letting the players get away with putting their hand on the side of the ball and turning it over, but the other official is calling that SAME action a carry. That is what I mean by consistency..the SAME action being called two different things.

How long are you watching your partner?
 

My point is, you might not be totally aware of what your partner is not calling. You can only watch what your partner is doing very little of the time. That might mean that your partner is not at the same judgement level that you are at. It does not mean that you just adjust to one call because you called one thing and your partner called another. Just like anything, you should talk at halftime or between quarters and even during timeouts if you can. Get on the same page as much as you can, but in the end you have to call your own game. If you just do not make calls just because you want to match your partner, you might be precieved as just a bad official like your partner. You still have to call what you see and what occurs.

Peace

That's what I was saying. You need to have that done before the game. I'm not talking about things where it may have been different. I'm talking about the exact same action. No you can't watch what your partner is doing, that is why you need to get it straight before the game and be consistant with it from the start.

Pregame is very important.
 

We need to understand that there are officials that just have more talent than other officials. You cannot expect every call to be perfect as a crew. You do the best you can. Eliminate as many mistakes as you can, then get out. You are not going to make every game perfect and everyone is not going to be on the same page. We can all call the same things and one official will be picked on because that official made more of the calls. Especially in a 3 Person game, it is not uncommon to have one or two officials making all the calls. I have done a 3 Person game and only made 4 calls the entire game. It just works out that way sometimes. And that could have been because I just personally was not having the best game or my partners just had a lot happen around them. Either way there is nothing wrong with that situation. Call the game you see and get out. Not much else you can do in my opinion. But that is why it is always stressed to have a good pregame. That is the best way to at least start on some kind of similar wavelink.

Peace

I can say just from my camp experience about three man. When I had a crew with two people who never called three man, it went wrong. Everything was terrible. When I worked a game with two very experience three man officials(both call college), the game went like silk. Your partner(s) do make a difference.

Totally agree!!!!
 

Completely agree. Alot depends on the type of experience your partners have in 3 Person to make it work.

Peace

Heck, Tim,
Being in camp, worrying about where to go and how you look and which hand to raise... your newbee camper partners were probably not concentrating on the game at hand.

I've always thought that teams can get screwed at official's camps, but bless 'em for coming anyway.

mick

Which hand to raise was not the issue at camp. Where to stand was. For these partner's. This was not there first game to call. It was there first time with a third official on the floor. I would rotate and everyone was lost. I saw three one one side of the floor several times. I would call a foul and the wrong person would rotate to my spot. When the ball went OOB we would have two whistles. When you are thinking of those things, it is hard to call the game right. I had one game with the two college guys. One started calling mens this season and the other calls womans. I had observed his games several times last year and knew what to expect from him. It was a very clean game. Rotations were smooth. Everyone was sharp. The observer could only comment on nitpick things. "Why did you call this?" and "could you have left that alone."

I here ya.
 

Isn't that a good feeling when that is all they say? :D

Peace

Re: I here ya.
 

Amen. I'll take it.