The holy grail of officiating training is useful video. The key word there is ‘useful’. In sports, video is now everywhere. The problem with most of it is that it may or may not show the type of action you’re looking to train for.
When training to improve your judgment on calling targeting in football, that challenge is even greater. While many targeting penalties involve receivers or ball carriers, some occur off the ball and are therefore rarely captured on video.
Referee’s Senior Editor for Football Jeff Stern explained the significance. “To be more competent calling targeting it’s as much about knowing what isn’t targeting as it is about knowing what is. You have to be able to distinguish aggressive, but legal contact from what the NFHS has defined as targeting.”
Referee’s new Targeting: See It. Call It. video guide contains a variety of real high school video plays that educate and explain how to anticipate targeting by watching the body language of players and how to judge if the eventual contact constitutes targeting or not. The videos are enhanced with ESPN-style graphics to clearly highlight what you should be looking at and when. Voice-over instruction delivers clear guidance on what you’re watching.
Not only does the Targeting video guide provide useful video, it does so in a very unique way. “Our goal is to put useful training in official’s hands where they need it.” says Dan Olson, Referee’s Product Manager. “We’ve been looking for a replacement for DVDs for years and streaming just won’t cut it when you’re trying to hold an association meeting in a school basement with no WiFi.”
The Targeting video guide comes on a single USB drive and can be used on PCs or Macs equally well. “This USB drive concept is fantastic,” Olson continued. “It will work on any computer you have with no software to install. Plus, it has a full menu so you can get to exactly what you want quickly if you’re using it for personal instruction or as part of your association training program.”
You can view a sample of the video and preorder Targeting: See It. Call It. now on the Referee Training Center for only $19.95, along with a wide variety of other world-class football officials training tools.
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