Lessons Learned from 18U Gold (Long Post)

[Manny A]

Originally Posted by IRISHMAFIA

Actually, don't know why any of these are even considered an issue. There is nothing there that shouldn't have been known and familiar before being assigned to a tournament of this level for ASA.
.
.
.
This stuff is the standard that has been included in schools and clinics for more than a decade. If it is a shock to you, that means you even haven't gone to the clinics or your clinicians are not presenting you with what is expected.

Guilty as charged. I haven't been to an ASA school or clinic (other than routine pre-season training with my association). The vast majority of what I know is through OJT from previous ASA Nationals, Showcases, and other tournaments. And with the exception of maybe two or three games a year, I work two-man in those games.

And as others have pondered, I did start out as a baseball-only umpire, and worked baseball for about 12 years, before moving over to softball. To this day, I still bring those nasty baseball habits onto the skinned moundless field with me (like tracking pitches only with my eyes, not signalling foul on the ball back to the screen, etc.)

So maybe I wasn't cut out to be "assigned to a tournament of this level for ASA." But I can tell you that there wasn't a single umpire from what I saw or heard during post-game critiques of other crews who didn't screw a couple of these things up. Perhaps it's because they all had extensive NCAA experience, or maybe they, like me, had a baseball background. Or maybe they were just human.

Whatever the case, I was not alone in either forgetting, or just being totally unfamiliar with, the "ASA way" that was expected of us in this National. And I posted my observations to help others here who may be in the same boat.