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Most officials I know use both a finger whislte and a smitty. In case you don't know what a smitty is, it's a small lanyard that clips onto your zipper on your shirt. Basketball officials use these. I don't ref basketball, though. The smitty is used for faceoffs only. Since one hand is pointing to the sky and the other is pointing at the ball, you can't use a finger whistle for the faceoff, unless you take it off your finger and hold it in your mouth with your teeth. If you do this, you will sometimes blow the whistle out of your mouth when you start the faceoff and then have to either catch it before it hits the ground, or find it in the grass after the players leave the area. With a smitty, we blow the whistle, then let it fall out to our chests. After play moves on, we tuck the whistle into our shirt pockets until the next faceoff. With a neck lanyard the whistle tends to bounce around alot. And if you tuck a neck lanyard into your shirt pocket to control it, it still tends to come back out alot. You also don't want to be seen running down the field with a neck lanyard whistle sitting in your mouth. As a general rule, it's a good idea not to officiate lacrosse, soccer, or hockey with the whistle in your mouth, ready to blow it. Most officials and coaches feel it's better to have the whistle in your hand. That way, it gives you a split second to think about what you saw before you blow the whistle. In the time it takes for you to bring the whistle to your mouth, you may realize the call doen't need to be made, or just change your mind, and realize that there was really no violation to call at all. It's better then blowing a whistle and realizing you made a mistake and have to wave off a goal when you shouldn't have blown your whistle at all.
Just some suggestions.
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"Tell people what you want them to do, not how you want them to do it and let them surprise you with their ingenuity" - G.S. Patton
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Fri Oct 24, 2003, 04:09pm
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