Lessons learned at Referee Camp
During the final weekend of June, I traveled to Sioux Falls for an officiating camp run by Northern Sun co-assignor Colin Kapitan. I rode with fellow Twin Cities officials Isaiah Conrad and Jeff Mosca to the three-day camp (two other Twin Cities officials, Brent Svor and Jason Naber, attended the camp as well.)
Referee Camp is an opportunity to learn from and work good AAU-level games in front of college officials/clinicians, who provide tips about how to improve. There was also an opportunity to learn in a classroom setting. Some of these are new things I had never thought about before; others were phrased in a way that sunk in. Here is a list of lessons learned at Referee Camp:
* Stay on the endline after a made basket. Officials have a tendency to start to head up court after a made basket. Just when an official starts to do that, is when they get out of position to make a line call.
* Do everything the same, all the time, on every play. If you do that, officiating is simple.
* Slow Down!!!
* Have a patient whistle
** This one gets two asterisks because it was perhaps the most simple yet profound thing I heard from a clinician named Justin Ingalls: “If you are not a good person, you are not going to be a good official.” I assume that same theory holds true for coaches and parents as well.
* Pay attention in warm-ups
* Four theories from a veteran basketball mind named Tynes Hillenbrand (sp?):
1) A short pencil is better than a long memory (write things down so they stay with you - I am complying with this one)
2) 80 to 90 percent of what we learn is what he hear and see (a better learning model than just lecture)
3) Failure or success is not forever (don’t rest on your laurels if you are good, and if you work hard enough you will achieve a level of success)
4) No advantage is permanent (similar to point 3, you have to keep working to catch up or get ahead)
* “Nothing good can come from an extended conversation with a coach”
* Two buzzkills of officiating: comparison and conceit (always comparing yourself to another official, “I am just as good as he is, why does he get better games” and conceit about your own self)
* If there is nothing in your lap, extend your vision
* In officiating, there are no “nevers” and no “alwayses”
* The best calls you make are usually “no-calls”
* Be your own best critic
* Dress to impress on game nights or when you go to camp
* “Every play has a beginning and an end. If you blow your whistle in the middle, you have missed the play.”
* “If you are good and passionate about your officiating, you will get noticed.”
* It’s not that fans don’t like officials, they just don’t like the shirts we are wearing
* Referees need to practice - teams practice every day after school
* Don’t call the second infraction, call the first