Exhibition game tonight
Last night a referee buddy of mine called and asked if I would like to work a friendly match between two (almost) local teams with him. Of course I was all for it. :-) (you can never have enough practice as a ref)The game is scheduled for tonight, 8 pm. I hope I will be able to write a couple of lines afterwards to let you guys know what has been going on.
Teams: Men, 3rd and 4th division - mostly amateurs, who practice about 4 days per week
History: I had one of those teams in a cup game last week, which they won.
Goals:
- Good teamwork - My partner for tonight is a referee in our 4th division, which means he knows one team very well, but has to adjust to the style of play he'll see from the other (faster, more physical, higher skill level).
- Take it seriously all the time - It is a game that should be easy to manage. But even though it is by far not as challenging as the games I usually ref on the weekends, it's still on a high enough level to cause us serious problems if we don't bring full concentration and respect for both teams. Point is, while I don't have any problems taking this seriously, it will be a challenge to get to that level of emotional arousal, where I'll have 100% concentration and be able to work a good game. (Do you guys know about the inverted U that describes the relationship between emotional arousal and performance?)
- Good communication with players and coaches - When you call games on a lower level than usually, you tend to show players and coaches that you dont't want blabla all the time, that they should just live with your decisions, and so on. Because the feeling of superiority creeps in (something to the tunes of "I ref where you guy will never play/coach ... so would you please shut up!"), it leads to harsh reactions (warnings and T's) where players or coaches just don't understand the things you do. The ref seems to be unapproachable, which is never a good thing! I don't want that tonight :-)
- Practice to sell tough calls - You can't really experiment as a referee in a regular game. What if it goes wrong? It might affect your performance in a game that actually means something. So I will do that tonight: offensive fouls, hard contacts, weak-side calls where nobody else, but the involved players, knows what happened (because they were watching the ball). More dynamic signals, better body language!
- Get a copy of the game tape from the home team.
posted by BBallRef @ 2/27/2006 09:31:00 AM
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