The Official Forum - Starting the season with a scrimmage

I started my 2006 season with scrimmage action tonight (Freshman, then Sophomore/JV, then Varsity).

We had six officials show up, two rookies, three veterans and me (third year guy). The white hat let me run the middle for the freshman scrimmage and we did five-man mechanics. It was my first time as referee except for about 4 minutes in a junior high game late last season. I started to get the hang of it as we went along. Luckily, there weren't any complicated penalty calls or rules interpretations, so it was mostly about mechanics, which our veteran white hat helped me on.

For the soph/JV scrimmage and the beginning of the varsity scrimmage, I helped out the two wings (the rookies) because I'm most familiar with those positions, so that was fun. I remembered how I felt in my first scrimmage two years ago - completely clueless. They did well.

Then in the second half of the varsity scrimmage, I went to umpire. That I didn't like all that much - it seemed like a constant mash of bodies and I couldn't really see anything. I felt like I couldn't get to the line of scrimmage fast enough on pass plays, which probably meant I was lining up too deep, but I'd only ever done umpire one time before, in my first year.

I don't know that I'll do much referee or umpire this season, but if anyone has any umpire mechanics tips, I'd be happy to get them.