Luckly I remembered to bring one.

I survived
 

Well, I survived my first white hat experience.

Things I did wrong.

Signals were real fast and I didn't really clear myself from the area to do them. I just sorta did them. They were right at least but still obvious it was my first time.

I freakin forgot until like the third score that I'm suppose to repeat the touchdown signals after a score. I just ran up there and signal untimed down hollared out "untimed down", waited about 5 seconds or so and blew it in.

I forgot to hollar "it's gone" or something like that for the first few passes and the first punt.

Basically all the things one would do to kinda control things, I didn't do for almost the whole first half. At least I remembered a coin :)
I felt like a chicken with my head cut off and it definately took a while to get enough of the hang of it to feel like I wasn't making a fool of myself.

Well...next chance is on Wednesday. Learn from this and try again. JV is for me to learn too I guess. I'll get better.

If those are it, I'd say you're well on your way.

You just described pretty much every white hats first time!!

Listing your own mistakes for the world to see says a lot. You recognized your errors and learned a little something about the game and yourself. The journey has begun on the right foot.

I know it says this in the mechanics book, but I've never understood why it's needed -- all it does is take one person who's cleaning up and force him to turn to the press box to give an signal that's not needed.

As for the rest, it will eventually become second nature if you do it enough.

I would totally agree with Rich...I never signal after the score to the press box for this exact reason. You turn to signal and a kid gets jacked 30 yards away from the score and everyone sees it but you. I also never signal or say untimed down...if you are at a varsity game I hope the timer knows not to run the clock on a PAT.

Well...next chance is on Wednesday. Learn from this and try again. JV is for me to learn too I guess. I'll get better.[/QUOTE]


Lower level games is exactly where you should be practicing your craft as the white hat. I am the white hat on my varsity crew and during all of my lower level games I try not to white hat the games and have someone that is less exp. do it...the problem is not a lot of guys know how to white hat or just don't want to...too much pressure? I feed of that pressure to make me a better official.

Practicing at the lower level will make you much more comfortable during varsity games…concentrate on all the little things also and it will come.

I've always assumed the reason for the referee repeating the touchdown signal was to confirm there weren't any fouls on the play. How does your crew handle plays that result in a touchdown when there is a foul? Or am I just out in left field?

Or worse, nobody sees it because you are the only one at that point trailing those players.

I didn't say it in the last post, but I don't signal the TD either. I'm in good company if you don't do it either, GWR. I don't say "untimed down" either. No timer (except once at a freshman game) has ever run the clock on a try. I save the untimed down mechanic for an end-of-quarter untimed down.

As for how the press box handles a play with a penalty, they can either see the flag on the field or my preliminary signal for the foul. I've never had a press box confused by my lack of a confirmation TD signal. If it's a clean score, they'll see the teams line up for the try.

And if they want to do that in a frosh game, I, for one, am not going to stop them. ;)

+1