Attending 1st ASA Nat'l. School

[WestMichBlue]

Originally Posted by Steve M

In addition to what Steve and Scott said - make sure that you attend the informal adult beverage get together. I found that the discussions that went on in that gathering were at least as benficial as the class & clinic work. Where else can you sit with several members of the NUS

All good advice BigSig. However, like any other human endeavor, it can be very disappointing when it fails to meet your artificially high expectations.

I attended my first (and last) NUS three years ago. The evening registration offered nothing; just a bunch of the locals that had eaten all the pizza and were well on their way to consuming most of the beer by time I checked in.

The clinic was way oversold; the attendee vs clinician ratio was twice ASA’s recommended 25 to 1. So your individual repetitions in drills was halved. I remember leaving one particularly long and slow line, going down the hall to the restroom, and returning to my same place in the line.

The local/state associations used the clinic as a training program for rookie umpires. To some of us, it seemed as though 60% of the attendees were low on experience. This dumbed down the overall clinic.

However, I did pick up a couple good hints and was looking forward to the Saturday night dinner/social interaction with the clinicians. Surprise! The sponsoring group cut the day short by an hour and announced that they and the NUS were going to dinner at a local restaurant. They invited us, if we could find a table in the same restaurant! (Yeah right - picture 50 or more of us descending on a popular restaurant on a Saturday night!)

It was 4:00 in the afternoon and I didn’t know what to do. My money (clinic, travel, and hotel) was already spent, but at least I could recover some of my time. I checked out and traveled a couple hours to my brother’s home and enjoyed dinner and the evening there before heading home.

I am not bitter; it is simply that my expectations were way too high. I’ve attended many district and state clinics, and they have been valuable. I assumed that a National clinic would be for experienced umpires, with content to match. That is a mistake! It is simply another umpire’s clinic. A little better, and a whole lot more expensive than local ones.

WMB