Rookie Official
 

Hello Everyone,

I am a new IAABO Official as of last year. To date I have officiated about 20 games. Love it! I seemingly have the itch to do more and more games when I am not officiating.

I was just wondering what words of advice you all can share with me that helped you all in your early phases of officiating.

Just looking for tips and tricks to get in a groove sooner rather than later.

Go out and watch good veteran officials work, find a mentor, ask questions/watch videos (become a sponge) study, study, study the rules and work on mechanics ... just for starters.

Master your knowledge of definitions.

Glad to hear you have taken such an interest.

Find a mentor that has your goals in mind. Does you only limited good to find a mentor who has only done high school games, if you want to advance to college games. Conversely, if you only want to do high school games or midde school, it does you only limited good to find an NBA mentor, who has done the highest games possible. So find someone that can help you achieve what you want to achieve.

Study the rule book and case book. Everyone says this because this is the one constant. No matter what level you want to do, you have to know your rules.

On your off days: go to watch your mentor and other respected officials. You will begin to formulate your own ideas about what looks good and what kinds of things you would like to incorporate into your own refereeing style.

On your game days: stick around and watch the crew after yours, catch the pregame if you can, halftime adjustments, post game. Sometimes, there isn't much happening during these sessions, but sometimes big adjustments are made and it's nice to hear how veteran guys deal with issues.

Practice your signal calling in the mirror.

Get video of yourself and be honest in assessing it.

After the season, attend atleast one camp. Attend a camp that is geared toward newer officials. You don't necessarily want to go to a high level camp and pay twice or three times the amount for the same information you would get at a beginning camp. Once you have basics down, you can start looking at higher level camps.

Don't let your book gather dust. Almost every scenario that you will run into is documented as part of the cases. When you officiate, or when you observe another officiating, note "situations" that occur during the game and how they are handled. When you have a few minutes sit down with the book and look at the cases. Ask if the situations were handled properly. Were rules followed or not? Ask yourself some "what if" questions that change the situation and think about how it would impact the official's ruling. Again, the cases will guide you.

Listen to what your partners have to say. Some are more comfortable providing advice and guidance than others, but on the whole I've met more good experienced officials willing to share their experience than those who are not and I expect you will find the same to be true. When you believe they are not correct or the advice isn't as valuable don't become argumentative, it simply isn't worth it. Just take the good with the not so good and move on.

Hold yourself to a high, but not impossible to achieve, standard. Don't sweat the mistakes, but learn from them.

Finally, try to be grammatically correct when posting on this board. Our work is graded, usually not on a curve.

And Don't Believe Anything That Mark Padgett Says ...
 

Find a mentor. Are you noticing a pattern here? It's the first rule of officiating.

This is Good Stuff for a Rookie to Hear!
 

+1

Important though.
 

No it's not. ;)