Art Of Officiating

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Covering conflict management, the psychology of officiating, best practices and officiating/life balance.

Tips on Handling Blowouts

Sometimes games are less than games; they are a mish-mash of horrendous play and lopsided scores. Officials can either contribute to the mayhem or else...

How To Get A Postseason Assignment and Make The Most Of It

How do you get a postseason assignment? What skills are important when doing those big games? How do you stay at the top when...

Arrive and Shine With Good First Impressions

How you enter the arena, stadium, field or other facility says a lot about you. Do you casually stroll in? Are you laughing, confident,...

Who Gets The Longer Leash?

As officials, we unfortunately know that emotions run high in sports and every official must understand how to react appropriately when someone at the game...

30 Basics of Officiating

If you've officiated for any length of time, you’ve probably heard most of these basics of our avocation before, but they bear repeating and...

Does the Stop Signal Work Anymore?

Check out this portion of a discussion thread from a basketball referee online chat circa 2007: “Anybody ever notice how a lot of the talk...

Coaches Mentality

Coaches and officials can have an adversarial relationship because of the primary difference between an officials and a coaches mentality: Coaches care who wins and officials...

Creating Your Officiating Legacy

The average American can expect to live about 79 years. That’s roughly 28,835 days to leave your mark on the people you know and the places you go....

Your Calls Linger After You

You may think the impact of your officiating is confinded to the time the clock is running and ends at the buzzer, but your...

Get Great Series: Better by Next Week

If someone told you a they had a way to get better by next week, would you do it no matter what it was?...

Core Values Form Your Foundation

There are as many different values as there are officials. Core values are those attributes we hold dear and they form the foundation on...

Think Outside the Box

By Jeffrey Stern Officials who work a single sport sometimes have a tendency to be a little myopic. If football is their game, they follow...

Be Prepared When You Travel to Assignments

Whether this is your first year or 10th year as an official, there is great anticipation while you await your schedule. You can’t wait...

No Crime to Ask For Help

Why are some officials hesitant to go to a partner for help on a play? At a time when officials are under more scrutiny...

Increase Concentration in One-Sided Games

One-sided games are no fun for anyone, except for the team that wins, of course. Generally speaking, the losing team and the officials just...

Have an Appreciation for Other Officials’ Hard Work.

A cartoon that appeared in another publication depicted a young boy on the department-store Santa’s lap. The youngster says to Kris Kringle, “I don’t...

4 Tips for Talking to Coaches

Talking to coaches is not an exact science; they are as different as anyone else you would encounter in another forum. What works with...

Get Great Series: Better by Tomorrow

If someone told you a way to get better by tomorrow, would you do it no matter what it was? How about if it...

Seven Kinds of Hustle

Hustle is defined in different ways by different sports officials, but many will point out that the physical — get from here to there as fast as possible...

Can Our Intuition Deceive Us?

By Rick Gaydos A couple of years ago I was watching a local TV talk show. A panelist recommended a book that wasn’t typically sports-related but...

What to Do When Fans Cross the Line

What’s the protocol when a fan throws something on the court or field? How do you react on a personal level, and what should...

Your Officiating Style Should Embrace Personal Growth

It's been one of those games. Every stop in play, someone from each team is complaining, and that doesn’t even include the coaches, who...

20 Inspiring Books For Sports Officials

If you had inside access to the bookshelves of college and professional officials and officiating leaders, what books would you find? Sure, rulebooks are...