Summer Leagues - HS

[JRutledge]

Originally Posted by Freddy

Question:
Does a summer league scrimmage or league help you or those doing them become better officials?
If not, boycott.
Seriously.
I'm doing that tomorrow and Sunday. And encouraging others as well.
Just got email from local prominent coach: "Need bodies for tomorrow...32 teams coming...blah, blah, blah...all games will be 2-person games only...try to take 8 games if possible..."blah, blah, blah..."
Note: "...bodies..." That's what he considers us.
It's time for dedicated officals to differentiate between "they need me" and "I need this opportunity to get better."
I'm sick of trying to break officials of habits during the school season of shortcut habits they pick up doing eight games a day every weekend during the summer season.
Stop it.
If you have to do things to "conserve energy" in order to make it through the day, you've prostituted yourself.
Seriously.
Stop it.
Really.
Don't do that.

Get it? Got it? Good.

A couple things need to be said here.

First of all summer games are not played the say way that a regular season game is played (at least not here). Games are running clock games. They are often do not keep track of individual fouls, so we never report the number of the fouler. In many case do not shoot the actual FTs that are normally awarded or We often have several courts right next to each other and teams play back to back games without much of a break. No sure what happens we are going to use when if you delay the game during a running clock situation, the participants get very upset. Games take about an hour in most cases as most leagues have either a 20 or 18 minute running clock halves. So how in the hell are you going to do all the regular mechanics in that environment? You totally lost me with your last little statements.

Also if someone is assigned 8 games, is that not on the assignor? I have worked multiple games during the summer already where games were literally all day from the morning to around 10:00pm and I have never seen anyone assigned 8 straight games. I would think because the assignor wants to use a lot of people and in some cases I did not work more than 4 games at a time, at a particular site.

The only reason I do them is to see more plays. I do not even use regular mechanics for signals.

Peace