What high school coaches want

I attended a clinic at the beginning of the season (October) and they had a coaches panel. Here are my notes verbatim of what coaches want from officials.

Coaches want an experienced crew, or at least one experienced guy.
Coaches don't want strangers officiating a big game.
Coaches want sectional officials to have worked one of their games during the season.
Coaches think sectional games are played and officiated differently.
There is a better way to ref than just blow the whistle.
Crews are better for post-season games (currently the assignments are random).
The more you talk the better ref you are.
Gotta protect the shooter.
Be aware of previous games that may have been officiated differently, the goal is consistency between games/officials.
Gotta like kids.
The game is about adjustment. Officials need to anticipate and stay ahead of the curve.
If a coach is out of control, talk to him. If you made a mistake, admit it and move on.
Make sure to give equal opportunity to talk to officials.
Consistency is the key -- watch back-to-back calls.
Be on time to the game and get your contracts in on time.
Consistency in calls can be dependent on rotations and mechanics.
Coaches want officials to have good positioning.

Which of these do you guys agree/disagree with?

[just another ref]

Originally Posted by seanwestref

- watch back-to-back calls.

If this means when the last call was a block, the next call should also be a block, I can't disagree enough.

[Nevadaref]

Originally Posted by seanwestref

I attended a clinic at the beginning of the season (October) and they had a coaches panel. Here are my notes verbatim of what coaches want from officials.

Coaches want an experienced crew, or at least one experienced guy.
Coaches don't want strangers officiating a big game.
Coaches want sectional officials to have worked one of their games during the season.
Coaches think sectional games are played and officiated differently.
There is a better way to ref than just blow the whistle.
Crews are better for post-season games (currently the assignments are random).
The more you talk the better ref you are.
Gotta protect the shooter.
Be aware of previous games that may have been officiated differently, the goal is consistency between games/officials.
Gotta like kids.
The game is about adjustment. Officials need to anticipate and stay ahead of the curve.
If a coach is out of control, talk to him. If you made a mistake, admit it and move on.
Make sure to give equal opportunity to talk to officials.
Consistency is the key -- watch back-to-back calls.
Be on time to the game and get your contracts in on time.
Consistency in calls can be dependent on rotations and mechanics.
Coaches want officials to have good positioning.

Which of these do you guys agree/disagree with?

I agree with all but one of them.
You can talk to a coach who is GETTING EXCITED AND STARTING TO GET out of control. For a coach who is out of control, you need to penalize the poor behavior.

[Nevadaref]

Originally Posted by just another ref

If this means when the last call was a block, the next call should also be a block, I can't disagree enough.

Not to me.
It means that you can't have an illegal screen on white and then go down the court and miss one on blue. You can't penalize blue for carrying the ball or three seconds in the lane, when you have passed on the same things by white during the last few trips.
Taken in that context it makes better sense and has merit.

[just another ref]

Originally Posted by Nevadaref

Not to me.
It means that you can't have an illegal screen on white and then go down the court and miss one on blue. You can't penalize blue for carrying the ball or three seconds in the lane, when you have passed on the same things by white during the last few trips.

The last few trips part is not relevant. There should be consistency throughout the game.


It's the "similar plays should/must be called alike" philosophy that makes me cringe.

[Nevadaref]

Originally Posted by just another ref

The last few trips part is not relevant. There should be consistency throughout the game.


It's the "similar plays should/must be called alike" philosophy that makes me cringe.

The comment expressed by the group of coaches which we are discussing was "watch back-to-back calls."
So we are not talking about consistency throughout the game. That is desirable in its own right, but not pertinent to this specific concern being expressed by the coaches. They are trying to say that one thing that makes coaches upset is when calls during a short timeframe aren't handled in an equitable manner. People may not remember the call made back in the first quarter during the middle of the 3rd, but they certainly do recall what happened during the last couple of trips up and down the floor, so that action most certainly is relevant here.

To not think so is to fail to understand what the coaches are trying to communicate.

[JetMetFan]

Coaches don't want strangers officiating a big game.
Coaches want sectional officials to have worked one of their games during the season.

True. It's a control issue.

There is a better way to ref than just blow the whistle.

There is but we also can't talk to players/coaches all game long. It creates more of a distraction for us.

The more you talk the better ref you are.

There are guys I know where the opposite is true. The more they talk, the more trouble they get themselves - and their partner(s) - into.

If a coach is out of control, talk to him. If you made a mistake, admit it and move on.

Part two, okay. Part one, not so much. Trying to talk to anyone when they're out of control has a tendency not to end well.

[BillyMac]

Written by Tim Sloan, Bettendorf, Iowa
Released on MyReferee
Copyright© Referee Enterprises, Inc.

In basketball, consistency is a term that few can define but almost everyone can recognize and appreciate in a crew. Provided that a referee doesn't make the game dangerous or take the competitiveness out of it, the good coaches and teams will adjust to what the zebras give them. In fact, you can often pick those coaches' voices out from the mob behind you. Instead of asking, "How could you call that a foul?" they're reminding you, "If you're going to call it at that end. ..."

Consistency for basketball officials really exists on four levels and it's important for their upward mobility to succeed on all four of them.

Self-consistency. Most have heard the debate about whether a foul in the first quarter should necessarily be a foul in the fourth quarter or vice versa. Generically, a foul is a foul. But if you divide them up as safety, advantage-disadvantage and game control fouls, there are many successful officials who preach flexibility on the latter. They feel that you can change the mood of a game for the worse by being too rigid or too loose at the wrong times. Maybe so, but you still have to maintain a level of predictability during a game. If you're like most, trying to deliberately change your standard for calling a foul during a game is like trying to write with your other hand. It's clumsy, frustrating and not very pretty. Changing your standard depends too much on your current mindset. So, it's reasonable to believe that self-consistency over the course of a game breaks down as a result of other factors. Some of the principal ones are fatigue, attitude toward the game and comfort.

Fatigue is an easy one. An official whose heart isn't getting enough blood to the legs isn't getting enough to the brain either. Attention to keys and concentration dwindle as the game wears on and so do the responses. There is no real substitute for being in condition to handle the game. Attitude toward the game changes when the official forgets what I consider to be the golden rule: "You're paid to be here so it doesn't matter what you think of the experience." Call the game and don't cheat them with "good enough." Comfort doesn't refer to the fit of your compression shorts. It means how you're reacting to your surroundings: Do you feel safe? Are people or surroundings distracting you? There are people who can sleep soundly in an orchestra pit and there are referees who can cheerfully blank out the most hostile of environments and keep on doing their jobs. They don't let the fear of a lynching change how they call a game. Learn to deal with stress or learn to manage the issues that threaten you. The great officials can do that.

The bottom line is that the participants need to be able to trust you if you want to keep getting called back. And having the physical and emotional tools to call it consistently is paramount.

Consistency within the crew. Mechanically, I think it's far easier for referees who have never met to work together in a three-person crew than two. That's because they can focus on a more confined area and have to rely less intuitively on their partners to watch their backs for them. There's less of a need for a "system." That goes for crews who have worked together for years, too. Unfortunately, the flip side of that "independence" is the same partners might have more trouble staying "in sync" with one another during a game. If they're paying less attention to what their comrades are doing, they're probably not calling exactly what the others are calling either. You want everyone calling it the same way.

Crewmembers have to establish a reputation for working to the same standard in the same situations throughout the game. Unless you can find identical triplets somewhere, it inevitably means that even the best officials have to exercise some give-and-take in their judgments to leverage their success as a crew.

Consistency from crew to crew. One of the most underestimated factors in a crew's potential for success this week is what the coaches had to put up with last week. If the officials come in and put on a completely different show than the last gang did, one crew's going to get it in the neck. Somebody in authority has to be communicating with crews and telling them how their products differ - good or bad. It's even more critical that those crews listen and adjust. A great way to get booted out of a conference is to shrug off how you differ from other crews and say, "Take it or leave it." They'll leave it.

Perhaps the right word isn't consistency but capability. In manufacturing, a consistent process is one that always gives the same result but that result isn't necessarily the one you want. A capable process is one that consistently gives the desired results. Assigners want officials who reward their confidence in them by turning in capable performances night after night.

Fortunately, capability is a quality you can develop if you're willing to work at it. And it certainly pays off when you do.

Source: Arbiter

[JRutledge]

Whether we agree or not is really not relevant to what we do. Coaches might say these things but they often come with conditions.

Sure they want us to protect the shooter, but the minute we call something "cheap" in their opinion then we are not doing our job. Honestly, who cares what coaches want. If we are doing our job, our job is to work the game not worry or be consumed with their wants. Coaches often do not even read POEs or rules changes and we can be 100 right on what we are asked to do and they are totally unaware of what our job is or what we have been asked to do by people that are in charge of officiating.

Peace

[Rich]

Originally Posted by Nevadaref

Not to me.
It means that you can't have an illegal screen on white and then go down the court and miss one on blue. You can't penalize blue for carrying the ball or three seconds in the lane, when you have passed on the same things by white during the last few trips.
Taken in that context it makes better sense and has merit.

For me, it makes sense. A crew has no chance of being consistent throughout an entire game if they can't be consistent for smaller chunks.

I take all this with a grain of salt, but we can't have similar things called differently at each end of the floor or by crewmates and instill any confidence in the coaches and participants.

[Pantherdreams]

Originally Posted by seanwestref

I attended a clinic at the beginning of the season (October) and they had a coaches panel. Here are my notes verbatim of what coaches want from officials.

Coaches want an experienced crew, or at least one experienced guy.
Coaches don't want strangers officiating a big game.
Coaches want sectional officials to have worked one of their games during the season.
Coaches think sectional games are played and officiated differently.
There is a better way to ref than just blow the whistle.
Crews are better for post-season games (currently the assignments are random).
The more you talk the better ref you are.
Gotta protect the shooter.
Be aware of previous games that may have been officiated differently, the goal is consistency between games/officials.
Gotta like kids.
The game is about adjustment. Officials need to anticipate and stay ahead of the curve.
If a coach is out of control, talk to him. If you made a mistake, admit it and move on.
Make sure to give equal opportunity to talk to officials.
Consistency is the key -- watch back-to-back calls.
Be on time to the game and get your contracts in on time.
Consistency in calls can be dependent on rotations and mechanics.
Coaches want officials to have good positioning.

Which of these do you guys agree/disagree with?

Most of this is reasonable stuff. As we are all stakeholders in a game that we want to see grow and develop, at least having dialogue and respecting each others concerns is important.

In terms of direct feedback. Coaches want experienced crews but crews also only get experienced by refs gaining experience when they don't have any. At some point you've got to have a new guy/gal or two cutting teeth. You may know it, coaches may know it, but they too have to respect that fact and not try to exploit or overreact in those situations.

In terms of sectional games being played differently/reffed differently in our neck of the woods that is true. Once you get the playoffs only officials of a certain rating can do games, where as through the year its covered regionally by a wider variety of ability. You get the to the final and suddenly you've got more savy guys with a better eye for violations and much more likely to try to interpret adv/dis to have better game flow. It becomes much different then a reguarl season game particulary for the road teams.

I agree the shooter has to be protected because they are airborn and don't have hands free to protect or balance themselves. I think the problem becomes when you define protect the shooter. Not letting a kid wander the streets after dark helps to protect, but so does bubble wrapping them and never letting them out of the house. The problem becomes the interpretted or expected level of protection.

I can understand close plays that both go against one side being frustrating for coaches, but if we are consistently applying the rules the same way even a similar situation you can get different results. I think this is much more of a concern in two man games where there are bigger coverage areas and the consistency between two officials can be a problem. More often you might get the guy at one end letting a play go and then the other guy feeling they have to call it at the other to get it under control.

Like kids is probably an overstatement though it would be nice. THe professional expectation should probably be that you need to be able to empathize or relate with kids. If a kid who's brain is not wired the same as an adults and doesn't repsond to stimulus the same way seems to be unreasonable to us as adults that is pretty normal. The fact that they struggle to adapt to officials or changes in the game or from game to game should be expected, not poo-poo'd or seen as a reason for us to get frustrated with them.

[MD Longhorn]

Similar is not equal. What looks similar to a coach may not be the same at all from our perspective. Just because the close call on one end was a block doesn't mean the close call on the other end is not a charge.

[Rich]

Originally Posted by MD Longhorn

Similar is not equal. What looks similar to a coach may not be the same at all from our perspective. Just because the close call on one end was a block doesn't mean the close call on the other end is not a charge.

And yet, WE know what's similar. So how about applying the proper filter to what the coaches are saying and at least make sure we are consistently applying the rules and philosophies...

[OKREF]

Originally Posted by just another ref

If this means when the last call was a block, the next call should also be a block, I can't disagree enough.

Last summer at a camp I attended this was told to us.

If you have contact and a foul on one end, then the next trip on the other end if you have contact that is equal to or greater than what was just called you need to have a foul.

Conversely

If you have contact and no foul called, then the next trip, if you have contact that is equal to or less than what was just passed on you need to pass on it.

Consistency among the crew was his point.

[Pantherdreams]

Originally Posted by OKREF

Last summer at a camp I attended this was told to us.

If you have contact and a foul on one end, then the next trip on the other end if you have contact that is equal to or greater than what was just called you need to have a foul.

Conversely

If you have contact and no foul called, then the next trip, if you have contact that is equal to or less than what was just passed on you need to pass on it.

Consistency among the crew was his point.

SO what would you do if you had contact at one end with no foul called and the pg powered through the (reach/hold/push off) and advances the ball. But the PG then applies similar pressure and contact to the less athletic player on the return trip and it drags them to the floor.

All actions and contact are not = .