A true Newbie development

[Moosie74]

I don't think that going to a camp without having called a game is a good idea.

I've been with my association for 2 years and just went to my first camp this weekend.

I work primarily middle school and junior varsity and those are decent training grounds for the basics but I work with a few "paycheck" officials or lesser talented veterans and that stunts my development.

I learned more in 3 days at camp than I have in 2 seasons but it was not the basics but the next things up.

Some of the instruction we got was a repeat of the cadet classes but in those classes it was all chalk and talk and no court time. We did the lecture in camp and then called games.

As a group of 2nd and 3rd year officials mostly we all started calling those things we either let go or weren't sure of mostly because we had a clinician in the area giving us feedback and validating what we did.

In a weekend I started calling throw-in and lane violations, block/charge (2), and my first technical for unsporting behavior on a coach.

The rest of the campers expect their partner to be in the proper place or at least near it, they expect their partner to cover his/her own PCA and get those shared areas in 2 person.

A green rookie without calling any games is not going to be comfortable doing it. Rookies go looking for traveling and pushing fouls because those are fairly easy to see.

A camp throws a lot of concepts at a person in a short time. To me it's better to do the classroom work, call games for a couple of years and then go to a camp and get the next level stuff on the belt instead of the basics.