Anyone get worse after the first few years?
 

I'll try to keep this brief.

4th year, mostly assigned JV B/G doubleheaders, some freshmen and Middle school sprinkled in.

I have tried to improve. I'm in better shape, I'm in the rules and case books. I attend our association's training, I go to clinics, I've got a mentor. I go to watch more experienced officials.

I just don't feel I'm getting better. I think my judgement is getting worse.

Friday night, freshman boy's doubleheader in tournament. Aggressive D by both teams, poor shooting, so lots of changes of possession and rebounding. Late in Q2, I have what I think is a 50/50 charge/block call on a fast break. I go with charge (trying to remember what my mentor told me that if it's 50/50 go with the charge and it will help clean up play). A's coach vehemently disagrees. I try to explain that the player doesn't have to be a statue and that just makes him angrier. "You're (and it was either freaking, frickin, or F&*(ing) terrible." I T him up. Didn't even handle that right. Didn't inform my partner, just kind of wandered around. At half, partner says Coach may have had a point.

Next morning, Saturday tournament Middle school. Guess at 3 or 4 calls, pass or miss a couple of obvious travels and call some phantom contact.

My question is has anybody else experienced this? I hope I'm not one of those guys that has a rookie year over and over again.

It's not unusual. You're second guessing yourself too much.

Did your partner have anything constructive?

CONCENTRATE!!! DO NOT HEAR THE FANS comments.
Focus on the defensive player and fouls will be easier to see. Work on having a patient whistle.

Don't get discouraged. Lower level games are often more difficult to officiate and present tougher calls (because the kids are more out of control). Also, there are only 4 eyeballs on the court instead of 6, so we'll miss more.

The key is the passion and attention you are giving your craft. You obviously have high standards and "grieve" over missed calls...I'm a lot like that too. I don't think that's a negative unless you become obsessive. Some of my favorite officials are able to admit mistakes, but in a non-passionate and non-arrogant way. They just state what they've learned and move on.

One bit of advice a mentor gave me: keep the negative thoughts and words off the court. Don't "lament" bad calls during the game. Stay positive and look to get the next one right. Don't speak negatively about your performance during time outs. I think that just serves to bring the crew down. After the game you can discuss issues with your partner(s). I think if you stay positive, despite what happened 30 seconds ago, you won't have issues "snowball."

I have seen it with others for sure. Some people never progress or learn the tricks of the trade to advance their skills. I remember John Adams saying some time ago before he was the NCAA Supervisor, he said, "Some guys just get it and others do not." I think that is somewhat true. And I think many younger officials overanalyze things in their game. We all have bad things happen or deal with conflict even with many years of experience.

It sounds like to me your issue is more about confidence than anything. You have to realize or have the confidence that you will not convince a coach of every one of your calls being right. Most of the time coaches will complain no matter what you call or say to them. I have a coach on Friday who complained every time we called a travel on his players and every time a player on the other team made a move he wanted a travel. It got to the point I had to tell the coach to "knock it off" and he figured it out and did just that. And we kept calling the game the way we did before and after his complaining. I just think you need to stop putting much stock into what coaches say and be confident in what you call. You can also grow your confidence by watching more video of yourself so you can see for yourself if that block/charge is correct. Listening to coaches about anything is really fool's gold.

Peace

Freshman coaches know just enough to get them in trouble. When the 50/50 calls come, they want them. When they don't get them, they want to work you for the next one. They all think they'll be the next Dean Smith if they can properly work the officials.

"Coach, the defender had position.". If you need more than that, it should be, "You asked for an explanation, I gave it. Now we're playing ball/moving on."

Keep Workng Hard ...
 

Keep watching varsity officials work, and notice what they call, and what they don't call.

Make sure that your staying in your primary coverage area. Some of the comments in your post seem to indicate some loss of concentration. It's easier to lose concentration if you're straying away from your primary, and thus, easier to concentrate if you stick your eyes where they're supposed to be stuck.

We often charge technical fouls when we're pissed, and when we're pissed, we can often lose our concentration. I've seen guys try to set up free throws for a technical foul at the wrong basket. When you call a technical foul, slow things down, and I mean really slow things down. Get together with your partner, and let him help you out, even if it means that you don't switch properly on the foul.

GO TO CAMPS!!! Go to one designed for HS and go to a D3 level camp(even though you are not ready) . IMO nothing improves an official quicker than being in camp with officials who are better than you.

Wonder why I keep hearing this from top tier officials?:cool:

Perhaps the problem is that you continue to set the bar higher for yourself. This is not the right job for a perfectionist. There will always be a certain amount of doubt about the quality of ones own performance on any given day. Get input from others, but continue to be your own harshest critic.

Give it some more time. I'll agree with others it appears you have a good attitude but maybe a little too hard on yourself. Ok to think about sitches you could handle better/differently but learn from them and move on. The level of games you are working is difficult, when you move up the skill level gets better and the games actually get easier to work.

Maybe get some input from your assignor(s) or partners you respect if you don't have a mentor.

There are at least 2-3 I second guess every game I work. I remember it for about 10 seconds (if that) and move on. Anything longer and I could miss the next one, too -- and that's something you can avoid.

We all miss some. Basketball's a hard sport to work.

I have this occasionaly when I make a questionable or bad call and I know it, the players and coaches know it and the fans know it. The issue for me is that I lose my focus which then can cause me to spiral down from there. The good thing is, is that I know I do this, so I just have to take a breath, tell my self to let that one go and learn from it and then GET REFOCUSED. If I do that, usually the game improves and I don't continue to spiral down the toilet.

One of my favorite officiating rules is "See it,process it,call it." Really works in a sport like volleyball when you're a linesman and everybody wants a call right away.

It sounds to me like the only thing getting worse is your self-confidence. According to your post, you are doing the right things with conditioning, rules study. You did not mention it, but I hope you are attending a good teaching camp or two in the offseason.

You did mention a couple of things that alarm me in your post.

1. You should NEVER GUESS on a play. If you cannot see the play and determine a call with 100% knowledge, do not blow your whistle. If you do not have an open look, your partner probably will and can help. If you are constantly in bad angles, you need to watch yourself on tape or have another official observe you and see what you are doing to maintain open looks (ie moving to get an angle). It sounds like you are not in proper position, but even so, never guess.

2. Coaches will never be "won over" with a description of why you called a play. 95% of the time, they disagree with you and nothing you say will change their mind. Keep the dialog short and say, I saw a charge coach. The defender had legal guarding position. Then walk away.

3. Most concerning is that you are doubting yourself...we all miss plays, but move on and make sure you get the next one right. The coach has now gotten into your head. It would not surprise me to watch the play and find that you got it right. Trust your skillset, trust your judgement!

+1, this is something a lot of "veterans" will not admit.

To the OP:

1. Develop a process to make calls as consistently as possible from game to game. This will include obtaining and maintaining open looks.
2. Keep seeing plays and file them away.
3. Always pick up your defenders (recognize their numbers in your head) and let plays start, develop and finish before blowing your whistle.

Did your partner really say the coach may have a point about you being terrible?

Tomegun, No he was talking about possibly missing the call, but to his credit he said he didn't have the best look, it was in my primary and I needed to call what I saw.

Then he had no business saying it that way, IMO. He had nothing constructive to add, from the sound of it. If he had a good look and had something different, that would be different.

I've thought about this a bunch and think it's true. I still yo-yo from varsity 3-man to JV/MS 2-man and always found the switch to be jarring. I knew I was missing stuff and felt compelled to press, reach, and basically screw myself into the ground trying to be perfect to make up for everything you're just not going to see when you're "down" an official.

Flash forward to this season and, for some reason, things are a lot more calm whether in 3- or 2-man games. There's a recognition there that stuff gets missed, and even that mistakes are made, but it's not bugging me like it used to (yes, I still evaluate marginal/missed calls, still have discussions, but not in a beat-myself-up way, but more analytical).

What changed? Well, this is year 6 into the officiating odyssey and that may have something to do with it. Maybe I've matured (Nah!) and stopped caring so much what folks (fans, coaches, players) say about me while still listening to what they're saying (yes, nuggets of wisdom can come from the strangest places). Maybe it's that I don't do anything but MS/HS (i.e., no wreck) and so am "fresh" for games. Maybe it's because I came off my second round of camps this summer. In any case, you're asking the right questions and seem to be doing the right things. Hang in there and, if it's what you want to do, I'm confident you'll get there eventually.

So here's a veteran official encouraging a younger guy to second guess himself, with no constructive advice about how to officiate the play better.

Bleh. And the vets in your association are probably wondering why their newer officials lack confidence.

What you may not realize is that you ARE getting better. You appear to be starting to understand things that probably went right over your head before. One of the steps to improving is being able to recognize your errors (or just possible errors) and being able to deconstruct them and decide if what you had was right or maybe not...and then decide what you want to change, if anything, to improve.

Sometimes, you can do the right thing the wrong way and the improvement that is needed is in how you do something as opposed to what to do.

Take, for example, your discussion with the coach. Maybe you said too much. Maybe you said it in a way that was confrontational and escalated the tension. Maybe the coach was just going to be a jerk no matter what you said and how you said it. See if you can think of a better way to communicate to that coach so that they trust what you said....or at least respect what you said. But, again, it may have also been the coach but that still doesn't mean you can't review how that exchange went.

Lots of great stuff in this thread
 

Great thread, thank you for posting it. Lots of great feedback. I'm in my fifth year, and totally understand the OP's thoughts and emotions. I feel this way sometimes; when I do, i take a step back, and take fewer games in parochial leagues, jr. high, the leagues that aren't high school. This helps. As one poster said, the quality of ball in the much lower levels is so brutal sometimes that it can make anyone question their abilities as an official.

I talk to a lot of the guys/gals in my pool about it...not just my mentor. Their opinions are candid and honest.

One thing that helped me is this- I put together an informal "study club" of guys/gals...most have about my level of experience or less, but anyone is welcome. We get together once/twice a week, usually at a coffee place, drink coffee and talk. We talk rules, nuances, and water-bucket issues. This helps a lot. We have our regular study club, but our informal one is totally different.

The truth is, we are seldom as good as we think we are on our best nights...and not as horrid as we knew we were on our worst nights.

I don't hang with officials who frequent "coffee places". :cool:

If you are familiar with competency stages and the situational leadershio model developed by ken blanchard and Paul Hersey, part of their model is that theer is a learning stage where as you progress that you become insecure...

The stage you are going through is a natural stageof learning and development. The difficulty is that when we get to thisbtype of stage we need a leader that is highly encouraging and we as officials are normally on our own so it is harder to get through this stage... You will get through it just kep working at it

- I hope this isn't out of place in this thread:

I know that camps have been brought up previously, but as a newer official, I go out of my way to promote camps with my peers(I just attended one), because sometimes they can be presented in the wrong way. I have encouraged friends to find an instructional camp where they will get a lot of feedback and have the opportunity to sit in sessions covering important topics. For instance "If you totally blow a call how do you respond to an irate coach" or "at what point does an emotional coach shift to a disrespectful coach" etc etc. For a new official, this may be a completely demoralizing situation to think about and those situations can ruin your game. Not all clinicians are the best, but there going to be things that you'll learn in a very intense 3 day period that you won't during the season, primarily because you have paid to have a talented official watch and give you feedback.

My mentor told me that a camp is worth 3 seasons. I found that to be accurate in my experience. Even though I felt lost at camp, I felt very confident when I got back home. It was almost like a steroid for my confidence level.

The only camp I went to was instructional, although assigners were acting as clinicians. Many of the guys had attended other camps where the feedback was less frequent, and they didn't learn as much. We had very candid conversations, so there was no reason for them to sugar coat their opinions.

Bottom line: not all camps are created equally, but some are very helpful. Ask a number of people their opinion, since bias exists with the recommendations you'll receive.

That's A Lot Of Games ...
 

I don't know if this applies to basketball officiating, or, anything else for that matter, but according to journalist Malcom Gladwell, mastery of anything, whether it's the Beatles in music, or Bill Gates in the computer world, takes 10,000 hours of practice.

I was once told it takes a minimum of 7 seasons before one is ready "to work any game" in local our jurisdiction. The top 2 games would be Game 3 of the BV city final and the regional BV final.

Seems Arbitrary ...
 

My local board, according to our bylaws, will not assign a single varsity game to anyone unless they have worked four years, including the cadet year, as a subvarsity official, no matter how good they are. Members can't work a "full" varsity schedule until they have worked three years as a "split" (both varsity and subvarsity games) official.

Coincidence? 4 + 3 = 7! :)

heh. Our "coffee place" is a 24 hour restaurant/diner whose clientele is truckers, workin' joes, and the occasional stripper (not kidding) stopping in for dinner after a hard night on the pole.

I think the biggest tool an official (rookie or veteran) can utilize is video review. Instead of being uneasy about a call you made for the rest of your life (or until you forget about it), you can see it from a different angle (perhaps two if there is video exchange software being used) and analyze your call. Did the defender establish initial LGP? Did the defender move into the ball handler? etc... I think it's underutilized by newer officials because it does take a lot of time to get proficient at using the information gleaned.

For my high school games, I arrive at the site, introduce myself to game management, and hand them a self-addressed stamped envelope with a DVD and ask for a copy. I'm not always successful but I get more of the videos than I have time to watch during the week and it is immensely helpful in my progression as an official.

-Josh

In North Carolina along I-95, there are a few truck stops that are actually strip clubs....but I digress.

What were we talking about?

How do they handle transfers? I'm not planning on moving to your corner of paradise...just wondering.

I always get a kick out of places who essentially turn away quality varsity-level officials because they tell them they have to work sub-varsity for an arbitrary amount of time.

I know that if I moved somewhere and was told I needed to work 7 years before becoming a full varsity official, my career would be over.

I'm not saying that I'd expect to not be evaluated -- I'd be happy to be seen 1, 2, 4, or 10 times my first season -- whatever they wanted -- but saying that an official, no matter how good, would need to work freshman games to "pay his dues" is ridiculous.

(I ran into something like that when I moved here, BTW. I was able to work a varsity schedule right away but I had to wait 3 years before I was post-season eligible even after 15 years of varsity experience in other states.)

I know a few guys who have been at it for 10 years, great guys, but just don't get it, never will.

Tranfser ...
 

IAABO transfers fill in, for the most part, seamlessly, including transfers from Connecticut's other local IAABO boards, or from IAABO boards outside Connecticut. Our assigning commissioner communicates with the transfer's previous assignment commissioner and they will usually pick up where they left off. I believe that these transfers are assigned schedules according to the IAABO (International) constitution, and bylaws.

Transfers from non-IAABO associations are another story. Our assignment commissioner will try to get as much information about the transferring official as possible. Our assignment commissioner will also schedule the transferring official for a few preseason scrimmages, and observe said official, and base the transfer's schedule on the observation.

And, yes, it is almost like paradise. Connecticut basketball game fees for 2012-2013: Varsity Fee: $89.76; Sub Varsity Fee: $58.21.

How much of it is worked 3-person? How much travel money are you paid?

There's more to doing this than the paycheck you receive for the game.

That is true, but BMac is getting more than double what we get in WA state for a three man varsity game. WOW!

Could be worse...you could be working in Louisiana.

Is this for a single game?

My Little Corner Of Connecticut ...
 

Almost all two person games, except for an occasional holiday tournament. No mileage, however the longest trip, one way from one corner, to the other corner, of our area is 55 miles, so I'm guessing that the average one way trip would be around fifteen, to twenty, miles, one way.

My Wallet Runeth Over ...
 

Fee, per person, per game, and subvarsity includes freshman, and middle school, games.

Is that 1 game per night or 2? Here there is no set fee for officials.
The state association leaves it up to the school. Some schools will pay mileage for the driver. We get anywhere between $100 to $150 for 2 varsity games per official. Always have a girls game followed by a boys game.

Double Dare ...
 

All varsity assignments are single games. Occasionally subvarsity officials will get a freshman/junior varsity doubleheader, or a middle school/junior varsity doubleheader.

Fee is set by our state interscholastic sports governing body, with automatic raises each year equal to the average salary increase for teachers in the state.

Girls and Boys on same nights? So 2 crews?

No. Same two guys work both games. Even in the top 2 classes which are 3 man they work both games.

I have suggested a similar mechanism here but it hasn't got far. Basically, the teacher's (including the AD's) are certain to fight for their raises through their union when it comes up for discussion but, for some reason, they see no need for officials to also get the same raise...they just as soon see us get a pay cut.

If someone moved here (Southern Nevada...Las Vegas) and could work I would give them games next week. The fact that I already have next week scheduled is my only exaggeration in that statement.

I have a guy right now who just moved here and really isn't as polished as my top 6 officials (in my crew). But, he has been great with his participation and is flexible. I feel like I have to show him some loyalty and work with him to the point where I can comfortably put him on the court for some varsity contests.

Maryland (I belonged to two associations that serviced around 4 or 5 leagues): we only worked one game per night and the highest game fee was $65 (Catholic League). Some leagues had boys and girls on the same night at the same location, but not all of them did it this way.

Mississippi: double headers - girls varsity followed immediately by boys varsity. Game fee for both games (combined)...$60 when I first got there and it went up to $75!!! :eek: Love of the game people, love of the game.

Las Vegas: almost all schools have two gyms and there are 6 games played at a site per night. Games are played at 3:30pm, 5pm and 6:30pm. Double headers happen, but they are not something we do every night. Coincidentally, I am filling in with our sister crew tonight and my partners are doing the girls varsity game...I will be lonely in the locker room. Our game fee is somewhere around $50. I guess that is something I should know huh?

I already have my basketball schedule for 2013-14 done. Schools start in November scheduling officials for the next school year. Season starts first friday in November for non football schools.

Boys And Girls Of All Ages ...
 

Seldom happens here in my little corner of Connecticut. Boys and girls usually play on different nights. Usual schedule is boys on one night (4:00 p.m. freshman, 5:30 p.m. junior varsity, 7:00 p.m. varsity), and girls on the next night (4:00 p.m. freshman, 5:30 p.m. junior varsity, 7:00 p.m. varsity).

I have no idea why anyone schedules for games that far out. There really is just no benefit to either party.

Schools are responsible for getting their own officials, so we get full pretty quick.

So how do schools feel if someone breaks into small college basketball and has to turn back games a month or so before the season starts? I also don't see this as a good thing.

Sounds like the schools are trying to get the officials they like before someone else does and they probably try to out-do each other year after year and it probably creeps earlier over time.

I would HATE trying to make commitments on my schedule a year a way. It isn't like you're arranging a million dollar contract.

It might be the game officials have to play but it doesn't do anything for them.

If I may add...
 

...the handling of the Technical Foul after the Player Control Foul.

This is something that you can fix, and the correct handling of the mechanics gets you back on track confidence-wise. Move right into your pre-gamed handling of a technical foul.

Report, get a shooter, administer, deal with any subs, and put the ball in play. Nail this sequence of events and you are back on track.