I will be putting together a forum here in the New York City area entitled "The State Of Officiating." The purpose of this forum will be to bring together evryone who is interested in improving the quality of officiating in this area. I have reached out to officials and coaches on the high school and AAU levels to get them to attend. I plan on breaking down into groups to discuss various issues in officiating which are of concern. A few topics of discussion may be: 3 person crews, camps, moving up the ladder, rating system, and some others. At each group there would be one group leader and a person taking notes.After the round table discussions are completed,each group leader would have five minutes to share what solutions that each group may have decided. Then after each group leader has spoken we would try to come up with ways to move foward with these ideas. Plus, this would also be the first of a series of forums to come. I thought maybe some of my fellow officials may have some ideas or views that may be great for a forum like this. If you do, would you please pass them along to me. I am also considering inviting some of the High school assignors from this area, hopefully they will accept the invitation to attend this forum.

nyc forum
 

this will be the first of what I hope to be regular periodic looks at where we are and what we should be doing to improve.

3 Person crews- In IL we use them throughout the state. With three man crews you can get much better off ball coverage if all three officials stay in their primary and not just watch the ball. But if you in New York are short on officials (which i dont know if you are or not) I would not recomend them if you do have enough then i definetly recomend them.

While a ratings system is important to assure that the best officials are working the best games. It also helps to have an evaluation system which helps better officials instead of demean them as what sometimes happens when rating systems are used.

As for other topics you may want to discuss recruitment of new officials and retention of veteran officials. You may also think of discussing sportsmanship

Be sure to have some discussion about how to recruit and keep more women officials. With more and more opportunities for girls and women to play, there need to be more and more women officiating, too. It just makes sense.

Retension issues. If we can't keep officials, what is the use of recruiting them. We have a glut of 10+ year official and a lot of 2- year officials. Where is that 3-9 year official? Why did he quit? What are some things we can do better to keep him around? He officiated two years and is no more. Why?

He has shuffled off the mortal coil!

He has ceased to be!

He is an ex-zebra! :p

This forum will be attended by coaches and assignors
 

The topics suggested here will be considered for discussion. Also there will be coaches and assignors present at this forum. I am also considering inviting some one from the media. This forum will be the first of it's kind and I believe it should be beneficial to "The State Of Basketball."

Re: This forum will be attended by coaches and assignors
 

Including parrots? And the views of Python (Monty) regarding life and death? Should make for high membership!!

Seriously, Butch, good luck with it. I hope it takes off.

Chuck

Retention of officials is of concern to assignors and coaches. They are the main reason why many officials quit. They feel they are not a "Good ol' boy" and won't be picked by an assignor or they feel like coaches ride them too much so they quit. So adding them to the discussion is benificial. The assignors need good retention so they have a steady crop of upcoming officials to work into games. The coaches need it so they don't have to continually adjust to new officials. They know what they are getting when Mr. X calls their game.