Best Practices
Working Youth Games Is Good For Everyone
Youth leagues are where many officials get their start, particularly those who begin officiating at a young age. Those games provide a good place...
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...
Employ Active Recruitment To Get New Officials
How would you feel if you were thinking of getting into officiating and these were the recruitment slogans thrown at you?:
“Tired of the...
Squeezing the Last Drop Out of Your Talent
For most of the movie “Whiplash,” music instructor Terence Fletcher curses, rails at, belittles and humiliates his students.
When he encounters one of his former...
Sell the Tough Call
What do a ninth-inning call at home plate, a crucial roughing penalty late in the fourth quarter or a block/charge call all have in...
Media Relations
Ask pro or major college officials if they have a nightmare media relations scenario, and they’re likely to reply, “Yes. Having one of my...
Eight Ways To Avoid Negative Attention
The pages of Referee often feature the do’s for landing the next big game and breaking into the next level. But equally important to...
Postgame Discussions The Right Way
It was a tough game and not much went as planned. Now it’s time to break down where it all went wrong. It‘s a stressful situation and...
Officiating’s ‘Workplace Guide’
Although officiating is an avocation for most of us, it is one that must be treated as a business. Officiating should be fun, but...
Always Time for Teachable Moments
Whether it is during the prematch conference or a postmatch debrief, a formal evaluation or a self-evaluation, or in a classroom clinic setting, we...
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...
6 To Do’s Before Play Resumes After a Stoppage
At a time when scrutiny of officials is greater than ever before, the need to get plays right is Job One. Most evaluators won’t...
Integrity: What We Do vs. What We Say
Officials are the keepers of the game. That’s a very high stature. And with that stature comes lofty expectations of integrity.
Impartiality. Fairness. Morals. Those...
Climb Your Mountain
A mountain is such a commonly used metaphor because it provides beautiful imagery to our goals and the challenges we face to reach them. Every...
Are You Ready to Be in the Spotlight?
Getting the big game — a state playoff contest, a showdown between traditional rivals or a game to decide a conference championship — is...
It’s Not Your Timeout
A timeout provides officials with an opportunity to galvanize, regroup, clarify or simply maintain focus on the game at hand.
What can a person do in 60 seconds?
An Olympic-level...
How To Handle a Kicked Call
A
s a longtime NCAA Division I college women’s basketball official, Mark Zentz says there’s a surefire way for him to know when he’s blown...
Traveling Etiquette 101
There are practices that should always be followed when traveling with officiating partners to make sure everyone gets to the game on-time, and gets along with...
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,...
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...
Right Way to Turn Back a Game
In most aspects of life, there is a right way and a wrong way. Such is the case when you turn back a game. Knowing the difference...
Lightning Protocol Advances with Technology
In the not-so-distant past, the protocol for handling lightning was straightforward for officials working outdoor sporting events at the amateur levels. If lightning was...
Officials Who Coach
We start with my story.
I was officiating with a rookie partner (who had great potential) on a middle school championship basketball game. Perfect pairing...
4 Reasons We Fail to Get Help
I stumbled upon a couple of clips of MLB games and got a chuckle out of how the announcers reacted to two situations. It’s...
