Recap, March 25, 2006 - What a difference a day makes
What a day ... just about everything went wrong, so that makes it three in a row.
It began with the drive to the game. I had our evaluator travelling with me, because he is from my town. We met early to arrive about two hours prior to the start of the game. But a construction site on the interstate got in the way of our plan. We needed about 90 minutes to drive a 2 miles distance, because they shut down the whole interstate and everybody had to get on a small backside road. My partner who lives a bit closer to the town where we had our game arrived at the same time at this spot (construction site) as I did with the evaluator. As soon as it was clear that we would be too late to have a decent pregame, we decided to get in one car. So, at the next possible stop we got in his car and had our pregame there (a pleasant 20 miles drive). We arrived at the gym 10 minutes prior to the opening jumpball, changed, said hello and off we were ...
The game ... puhhh, what would you expect? Good teams, good refs, good game? Not this time, and unfortunately it had something to do with the refs :-( We still managed to have everything under control, but it was not what I had expected. I know that my expectations are always very high, but once again I was not happy with my performance and our performance as a team. I don't know if I put too much pressure on myself, now that I had a couple of games in 1st division. Somehow, I expect that every game in 2nd division should be a "piece of cake" now. But that's just not going to happen, because reffing 1st division games doesn't make be a better ref at once. It takes time and I am still young. I think I need to relax.
What did I do well:
- Being in good position to see plays.
- Communicate.
Things to improve next time:
- Call selection (do you see a pattern here?)
- Sell a technical foul. I had a brief talk with a player who obviously didn't like what I told him, since he spat on the floor between us before turning around and walking away. Of course, I gave him the T, but in a very calm manner, and nobody knew what it was for. It probably looked strange ... referee and player talk quietly to each other, then player turns around and walks away and the ref now hits him with the T ...
- Don't let talk of players and coaches get to me. I was angry, our late arrival had stressed me out, and that's why I was not calm enough to just ignore some of the comments I got.
After the game we had dinner with our coach/evaluator and he told us what he saw (what I just wrote). Then my partner gave us a ride back to my car. When I reached for my keys I couldn't find them. I couldn't believe this was really happening, I had lost my keys (appartment, car, workplace, just every key I use) either in the gym, or in the restaurant. Maybe on the parking lot ... It was a quarter past midnight, we were 200 miles away from home and I couldn't start my car! My partner gave us a ride to the international airport at his home town where we hoped to find a car rental that would be open 24-7. But it wasn't meant to be. So he drove us all the way back home. We arrived at 3.30 am! Of course, now he had to go back 200 miles. But, after thinking it over I said I would invite him to sleep at my house for a couple of hours and have breakfast with me and my family before going back. It would have been to dangerous to drive back alone and as tired as he must have been by now. He gladly accepted and stayed. On Sunday morning after breakfast he drove back. Now I had to get my car. Fortunately my sister was in town to visit my parents this weekend, and she had to go back home on the same highway I used the day before. So I could go with her and she dropped me off at my car. Having the car back I drove the last 20 miles to the town where we had worked the game and had dinner. I talked to the people who work there but nobody had found my keys. I even walked around the parking lot by the gym, but I didn't find them.
What's next: a women's play-off game ... didn't have any women's games for a while! Make new keys for appartment, car, workplace ...
Preview, Saturday, March 25, 2006 - New game, new luck!
This game is going to be better than the last, at least that's what I believe!
I have to shake off the last two games, which were not very pleasant experiences, and get this game right. Actually, I am pretty optimistic that we will have a lot of fun. We will get another coaching, which is always great. I like my partner, who is a very funny guy, and a good official, too. And last but not least, the teams are good, 2nd and 4th in the league.
I worked a lot this week, watching tape of my last games, to improve my call selection. I gotta make calls consistently, and only the calls that fit in the game!!!
Beside the game on Saturday, I will finally have two games here in town. I haven't worked any games in my hometown so far, because I have always been away to ref games in 1st or 2nd division. On Sunday it will be men's recreational ball. I'll work with a much less experienced partner, and hopefully I'll be able to help him improve his game and he will enjoy working with me :-)
What's your call?
Check out this
site. You'll find a couple of videos with interesting plays and calls. Let me know what would be your call, or join the discussion here on the official.com
forum.
Are two bad games in a row the start of a crisis? - Recap, Saturday, March 18, 2006
Some things one has to learn the hard way. I am not sure whether this saying applies to refereeing in general, but it surely does to yesterday's game.
Consistency, anyone? There it was, again! On another level, but still ... actually, it was even tougher to learn the lesson here, in front of such a crowd, with the league's assignor in the stands, and so much at stake for both teams. Our assignor put it this way "I could have lived with 50 fouls instead of 40.", and "There were at least 5 calls that nobody in the gym needed." So, subtract 5 bad calls on ticky-tacky contacts, and then add between 10 and 15 calls, desperately needed to control the wrestling event we had at some points.
What did I learn?
- Consistency is everything and on this level nobody will accept anything else. It doesn't help to call everything, because nobody wants to see those calls ... More good calls? Yes, great! But more bad calls don't help anybody!
- There are good refs with a lot of experience as I had with me yesterday, and there are incredibly good refs as I was working with in my first two games! And there is a big difference between good and incredibly good ... Even one of my partners yesterday warned me in the pre-game that it would be different!
- Stay on top of things until the final buzzer. You cannot lose your concentration before the last horn sounds! We had an intentional free-throw violation (ball didn't touch the rim) by the losing team (Can anybody explain why a team would do this??? May be to get the ball back into the game without the clock running? I mean, he could have made the FT, the clock still wouldn't run and the ball would still be at the hands of the other team, only with three points instead of four separating them from the other team. The losing team filed a protest, because we didn't call it!!!
Did I do anything good? Yes!
- I had a couple of gutsy calls (and they were right, i.e. well deserved and needed, too!).
- I adjusted to my partners when I found out that they were not able or willing to adjust so much to me. That way I didn't stand out, even though I wanted (to call more, while they said we should slow down on our whistles!) As you can see from the assignor’s statement above, probably both of us had a point here. They wanted to eliminate the who-wants-to-know-fouls, I tried to stop players wrestling with each other.
- I thoroughly thought it all over when I lay in bed later on the train (a great way to travel, by the way!!!).
Anything else? No, unfortunately not. I'll wait for the tape to tell me more, and of course, I’ll write about it!
Good night!
Preview, Saturday, March 18
Coming next ... another game on a big stage. This will be my third game on that level. There are three games left in the regular season for every team, which means that teams are fighting for a better position in the play-offs race or for the right to stay in the league (In our system two teams from the 2nd division go up to 1st every year, and the last two from 1st div. have to go down to the 2nd tier).
Team B (visitors) tries to gain homecourt advantage for the first round of the play-offs, but has been plagued by a series of injuries, lately. Team A battles to stay in the league. They'll play at home in front of a sell out crowd, and try everything to get that W. Team B won the first matchup between the two by three.
My crew: Once again, two vetereans with me. They are very good, but not in the top-five as my partners in my first two games there, which doesn't make that much of a difference for me. It just gives you an idea of who I am working with (while the others were somewhat untouchable, these are of the same flesh and blood as you and me). The league's assignor will be there to evaluate us. I think, so far, he doesn't regret that he gave me games in his league ;-)
My goals:
- I don't want to stand out! In the first two games I managed to call (almost) the same things my partners called, event though my inner voice yelled "foul" way more often than I actually blew the whistle. I know this is part of the adjustment process on a new level. And it is another sport here ...
- Be calm, don't get caught up in the heated atmosphere (5000 people can be hard to ignore).
- Do what I do best, get in a good position, make the right calls (it's all about angles), and sell them ... no matter what.
- Let my partners handle everything else ... I know that I am still not good enough to deal with coaches, players or the scorers table, because I have to focus on the game 100%. It is so fast that I can't let my attention slip away from the play ...
"Highway to Hell" or "Winter Wonderland"
I had no games to referee, last weekend. Yet, I have a story to tell :-)
I went on a trip out of town for a referee workshop, organized by our national federation, for referee instructors from all over the country. In the past, there was no standard system of training for referees. Every regional and local association had its own approach for the lower levels, resulting in different quality levels and serious misunderstandings when referees from different regions got to work together on higher levels. Only two years ago a commission was set up to design a uniform concept for training and educating basketball referees across the country. The results of this long process were presented to the regional associations a couple of months ago and now every association sent its top instructors to this workshop to learn more about things such as motivation of students, communication in the classroom, psychology of teaching and learning. Of course, not all referee instructors are teachers in their normal lifes, so for most of them this is the hardest part in educating young perople. We all know a lot about being a ref, but we might fail when we have to deal with a stubborn kid ... This weekend was all about "train the trainers".
Unfortunately, most participants' expectations greatly differed from what we got from the people who presented us with their knowledge. We were introduced to
theoretical foundations of teaching and learning like
motivational theory,
constructivism and
perception theory, based on which we could develop or improve our own teaching strategies. Most participants, on the other hand, expected to get more practical advice as in "There is a kid who doesn't want to be there and misbehaves. What can I do?" or "How do I start a classroom session and get the kids' full attention?" I found it rather interesting that such simple situations were still a problem for these experienced instructors. As I said, most of them are not teaching professionally, but as far as I know everybody there had at least a couple of years experience in teaching referees. So, while most participants found it was a waste of time, I think it was a great opportunity to learn from very good teachers, who not only handled the criticism in a great way, but also gave new insights into a field, which is helpful not only for teachers, but also for referees in general.
So much about the workshop ... but what about the title of this post? Once again I got a nice car from my local
Enterprise station, an all-new Audi A6 Avant. It had only one shortcoming, summer tires, and it was snowing on Saturday. Even on the highways, where they usually clean up everything pretty quickly, there were still or again one or two inches of fresh snow. The thing is, summer tires are made of a different kind of rubber. Winter tires are manufactured from a softer mix of rubber than summer tires. The tire tread is made up of a lot of small tread bars with well-defined cross grooves and longitudinal grooves. Both factors contribute to improve road holding in rain, snow and slush, and they create safer driving conditions. With summer tires on snow it is like putting on inline skates for a figure skating competition on ice. Since we were a party of five and didn't have an alternative to get there, we just did it. We really pushed our luck here, as we found out soon. There was some snow on the highway and at one point I had to jump on the breaks, because a car with a trailer switched into our lane right in front of us, but we didn't have enough traction to slow down. To avoid a crash, I took the other lane, but when we switched between lanes, the tires suddenly completely lost traction and the car went out of control. I don't know how we managed to avoid the crash, but when our car finally came to a halt, everybody was stunned and shocked. I don't have to tell you that from there on we drove like 30 miles per hour and arrived more than 3 hours late for the first part of the workshop on Saturday. On Sunday the snow had melted away, so it was safe to go back, but I will remember this for quite some time.
That's it for now. Next is a game in 1st division. I'm really looking forward to it, because it's still new for me, and a very big challenge!
Lacking consistency in a very bad game - Recap, Wednesday, March 8, 2006
What a game! Two teams who were already out of the race for anything this season, playing each other in front of 400 "lunatics". I already wrote a couple of lines about these fans, but it is still entertaining, every time I work a game there ...
Anyways, here is the story of the game. Home team with a very slow start (down 8-20 at one point), sloppy defense, unforced turnovers, all that stuff. Fans are booing their team and the referees, of course! Later home team covers the gap, but can't pull away. Visiting team wins by 3 (last shot from hometeam, a wide open 3-pointer, hits the rim, but doesn't fall).
My partner (one of only two female referees in our league) and I met early, because we had never refereed together, yet. We had an evaluator at the game, who also joined us in our pre-game conference. After a long pre-game, a good warm-up and some personal chat (to build a team spirit) we started the game. Our plan was, to let'em play a bit, because we figured the game wouldn't be very intense. We were right (at least in the beginning), as both teams refused to play defense. The crowd, of course, reacted to this slow start and things started to heat up quickly. Unfortunately, my partner and I missed the point, where the game changed to "battle mode". Suddenly we had lots of contact, but never enough calls. This led to a lot of talk from coaches and players. We managed to avoid a T (nobody really deserved one, said our evaluator), but even with the warnings we gave, the stress level was considerably higher now.
As a consequence our concentration was not there anymore and consistency went out the window! Here is an example: a push from a player (home) to another player's chest ... both of us call it, with only one fist in the air. We knew, it was unsportsmanlike (intentional), but neither of us signalled it as such. We come together and decide to correct it. I signal the unsportsmanlike foul, and while everybody knows it was the right call, we looked pretty bad here.
As I told you, the fans there are a pain in the ..., so is the home team's manager. He is just foul, being friendly before the game and yelling things, worse than any fan would ever say, during the game. I don't have a problem, if this happens in the stands, because we allow spectators to do whatever they want, as long as there is no physical harm. The problem with this guy is that he stands behind the scorers table. At one point late in the game he verbally attacks the visiting coach from behind the table. My partner sends him off to the stands. He starts yelling how we were corrupt and robbed his team. My partner tells him in a very calm way to leave (go to the stands). She is a police officer in real life and handles such situations very professionally, calm but with authority. He leaves, fuming.
In the last quarter I call everything I see (12 fouls), my partner had one call! She just couldn't get back in the game. It must have looked horrible. The only good thing, the players decided the game, not us!
When the game was over, my partner and I left. We waited in our change room, but it took 20 minutes before our evaluator and his buddy (another referee coach) entered the room. He tells us that the manager once again accused us in front of him using words such as corrupt, bribed, and so on. :-( He had an argument with him, telling him that he couldn't say such things (he even could be sued for it), and of course he didn't comment on our performance.
My partner and the evaluator filed reports and sent them to league officials. I think the club will pay some sort of fine, even though I don't think it will be too high.
What did I learn? I don't know, yet! I'll have to find a way to get together with my partner when we are on different tracks as we were yesterday. The game would have been a lot easier if we had just called more from the beginning, at least that's what our evaluator said. If I try to call a loose game I have to be more aware of any changes occuring on the court.
Positives? I was right there in crunch time, I was good at managing players and coaches regardless of the heated atmosphere, we tried very hard to work together (nonetheless the outcome was poor).
Recap, Sunday, March 5, 2006
Excuse me for being late with this recap. It was snowing pretty much on my drive back home on Sunday night, so it took more than 7 hours to get even close to my computer. When I finally arrived on Monday morning, I just fell on my bed and slept a good but short sleep (had to get the car back on time!).
The game was interesting, but nothing as spectacular as on Saturday happened in this one. I had to break up a (verbal) fight between two opposing players, T'ed both of them ... No, I didn't hesitate ;-)
Besides, the most interesting thing was a player who talked to me all the time :-) Incidentally, this guy happened to be American. But he must have played in Europe for a couple of years now or maybe was even born here, because when he started talking to me, he asked politely if I would understand English, otherwise he could talk to me in my native language. Smart guy ... First thing we talked about was that other guy from the visiting team who was "throwing elbows". At this moment we had called 5 or 6 fouls against the other team (playing a good full-court press) and 1 against his (other team not only played more intense defense, but also didn't drive to the basket, instead settled for 3-point shots and made 5 of 6 in the first quarter!). I told him what I had seen so far (nothing like throwing elbows!) and that his team had the advantage in the foul column. His answer was: "I'm not saying it's an advantage for him. I just want you to watch it!" Really, I loved that guy ... and he was a very impressive ballplayer, too, the lonely star on an otherwise weak team. From this point on he dropped by my side every once in a while. When things heated up a bit and the visiting team started to pull away, he came to me after my partner had called a foul on his defender: "Did you call that foul?" "No, it was my partner." "I thought so!" As if I wouldn't give his teams any calls ... Yet, he kept his cool and it didn't bother me all that much. So I left that one unanswered (almost), just smiled and said ok, then walked away. In the final minute of the game he hit a tough floater in the lane (he scored 33, but his team lost by 19), drawing contact. On the way back down the court he was on my side again and quietly talked to me "You don't want to give me no calls. Do you know me?" I replied "No, I don't know you and actually, I like the way you play." His answer: "Ok, I take it as respect that you don't call all those contacts. But I need a whistle here and there, even though I like to play hard." :-) I smiled at him and after the game, which was his last game for that team on their homecourt (the public announcer said something about going back to the States to be with his family when his wife gives birth to his 2nd child), he politely said thank you before giving autographs to some of the children waiting for him. Really a smart guy ... and I'll have his team one more time this season, tomorrow, when he plays his last game on the road for them. I didn't tell him, when we left the court, so I think it will be kind of a surprise. Nonetheless, I still think I'll not give him more calls than on Sunday ;-)
Recap, Saturday, March 4, 2006
This one was interesting, really interesting ...
When I met with my partner at his house, I learned that we would have an evaluator at our game, or a referee coach as they call'em nowadays.
We arrived at the game site early enough to have a coffee and a little snack with our coach ... then we proceeded to the locker room where we changed, had a loooong pre-game, and a short warm-up.
The game started with the gym almost full. First call was an offensive foul (moving screen) against the visiting team. A good way to start things (we had played about 20 seconds, so far) ;-) We continued to call it that way: travel on one side, then the same move on the other side. These Americans need to adjust to the FIBA rules ;-) 3 calls in less than a minute tells you a bit about the game and how ready we were! So far, no problem ...
But then ... I wish I could take that one back ... actually, I did! But that didn't solve the problem it just created an entirely different game. Are you confused now? So was everybody in the gym.
Here is what happened:
Visitors on offense, wide-open center catches a pass 5 feet from the basket with no defender close enough to challenge the layup. Yet, somehow he is surprised enough to travel ... good call from my partner who is lead in this situation. I turn around to get in position as new lead, before the home team inbounds the ball from the baseline. As I pass the scorers table (getting closer to the home bench) home coach stands in front of his bench yelling something in Serbo-Croatian (his native language) in my direction, and flails his arms like a windmill .... Whack! There is a T. In the same moment I realize something is wrong here. My partner just made a call against the visiting team, his defense didn't click (probably a rotation was missed by someone), but they have the ball now .... What the hell am I doing here? I blow the whistle again. Signal that it was my fault. Take the call back. Of course, this brings coach B to his feet, immediately. He asks for an explanation, to use a euphemistic description ... I give him a polite answer, taking responsibility for a very bad call, and taking this call back. ... He's not happy, not at all. Sais I can't do that, and that he has never seen a referee take back a T ... I think I completely lost his respect in this moment. But ok, I would have to deal with it.
Now, I had to make sure, that I could leave it as it was, and continue to call the game the way it's supposed to be called. I had to climb out of that hole that I just digged for myself ... I used a lot of self talk to focus on the things that were going on on the court after that incident. It helped to get through it, even though I didn't feel too excited about it. I knew I was back when I called an unsportsmanlike foul on a player from the home team, who gave an opposing player a big hug to prevent him from passing the ball for a breakaway layup. After the game my partner and the referee coach told me that they could only tell from the expression on my face how I felt, not from the calls I made.
We had 4 more (!) technical fouls during the game, 2 for players expressing a feeling of being robbed by the referees (visiting team), and 2 in one situation for players who tried to tell each other face-to-face how they felt about such pressing matters as family, religion, ethnical background ...
I forgot to mention that both teams played ball, too. Home won by 20-something points.
Wrap-up
- Good start, strong finish, and very good team work with my partner. Our coach, who is a veteran referee with 30 years of experiemce on the highest level, was very happy. He just asked about my feelings and gave me a good advice how to avoid such situations in the future. He said we had good control throughout the game.
- Very bad decision to call the T on coach A, but good thing to take it back. I would do it again (Please comment on that, everybody!!!)
- It seems I was able to refocuse pretty fast. That's good, but I have to tell you the truth, I didn't feel like it for 10 minutes (until that unsportsmalike foul), not at all.
- I learned a lot tonight, with the most important lesson to wait just a splitsecond before calling a T. It shouldn't be a reflex ... I'll try to just stop for a moment and then make a decision.
Preview for Saturday, March 4, and Sunday, March 5, 2006
I have to keep this post short, because I still need to pack my bag for this weekend's trip. This also means no spell-checking today ...
Today I already picked up my car from the Enterprise station around the corner. It will be a 6 hour drive tomorrow, and I don't like to go on such a long trip with my old and rusty car ;-) The best part of this weekend, besides the games of course, is that I get to stay at the house of my partner from tomorrow's game. He lives pretty close to the town where we will work that game and invited me to stay at his house, instead of going to a small hotel, which is very nice of him, because these hotels can be really really small and not very comfortable to say the least (it's the clubs, who chose a hotel for you, because they have to pay for it).
On to the games:
First match on Saturday: This season's surprise team (new to the league and in 4th place at 13-8) plays at home against a team, which fights to stay in the league (second to last place at 4-17). My partner is about my age, so we will build a pretty young referee team out there ... We will have to prove from the first minute that we can handle this game. I have never been to this place before, so I don't really know what to expect.
Goals:
- get control early ... then see if players adjust (play smart), and if it works ease up a bit in favor of the flow of the game
- don't do the things I saw on the video last night (or do them differently, i.e. better)
- team, team, team ...
- have fun :-)
Sunday: Two teams who stand next to each other in the standings (hometeam is 8-13, visitors 7-14). Home team depends on 2 very experienced American players, visiting team is very young and athletic. It's always interesting to work a game where "old and experienced" plays against "young and hungry". One team trys to outsmart the other, while the other team literally trys to run away with the game ... I expect a game of runs ... full-court press ... but no trouble :-) my partner in this one is one of the most experienced refs we have on that level. He has never worked a game in 1st division, but worked in this league (2nd div.) for almost 20 years! Now that's a lot of games!
The goals for this one are basically the same as for the first game, even though there is no need to be very hard from the beginning. It's always easier to ref a game in that constellation (young and old ref), because people know what to expect from the veteran, and as long as the young gun blends in it's gonna be ok, or better!
I'll come back on Monday and file my game reports. Make sure you don't miss them, you lonely reader of my blog!
Good night everybody
I'm on TV ... ok, actually not. It's just a tape from my last game.
I spend a lot of time reviewing old game tapes. This is part of a systematic mental training program, which started with asking myself questions about my motivation to be a referee and the goals I'd like to achieve, and eventually lead to practicing relaxation (breath control, progressive muscle relaxation), using imagery, and other interesting activities, which would't come to most people's minds when thinking about referees. What I do is, I look for situations where I got in trouble, blew a call, didn't react in a proper manner to a coach challenging one of my calls, and so on. I replay the scene a couple of times and try to visualize it with as many details as possible, everything I can tell from watching the tape, as well as all the things I do remember from the game itself, e.g. my feelings in this moment. That means I produce something like a verbal description of the situation containing all the aforementioned details. Then I reproduce the film sequence from this description using my imagination. Of course it wouldn't help if I just tried to internalize my mistake. Instead, I correct the error in my description. I change the movie's outcome to a happy end ... that means, me being a good ref and getting it right :-) This version of the movie I try to internalize, I replay it 10 times or more, again trying to visualize as many details as possible. Sounds weired? I can assure you, you are not alone, thinking I'm nuts ;-) Most of my colleagues do not approve of that psycho stuff either! But I think it's their loss ... Here are a couple of observations from the last tape I got, from a game I worked in 1st division (it was only my 2nd game on that level): A triple whistle on a foul ... something that should NEVER happen and would have cost us a couple of beers if anybody had noticed ;-). I am trail, player penetrates to the basket on the strong side after receiving a bounce pass to the top of the key. He scores and there is a foul, so at least we got that call right! But, as I can see on the tape I am to far away from the player when he gets to the basket. I was in a good position when he got the ball, but I didn't penetrate with the ball to be in better position for a possible foul call and the following rebound situation. We are asked to do this in order to get a better angle (do not look at the players from behind) and I wasn't there. I only started moving towards the baseline when the offensive player had already left left the floor for his shot attempt! Now I try to visualize how I anticipate the drive to the basket and react accordingly. When I move sidewards I move my feet like a player does on defense. What makes the whole procedure look goofy, are my arms. One arm is bent with my hand near my hip while the other hangs straight down with my hand pointing to the floor between my feet. I think it would look better (as if I had control over my body to some degree) if I bent both arms ... At least in my mind it looks good! I call a foul on a drive to the basket. Offensive player scores, but I say the foul was on the ground and the basket doesn't count. Good foul call, but wrong on the basket ... The offensive player had the ball in his hands when he got hacked, basket should have counted, even though he had just started the shooting motion and made one more step before releasing the ball.
There was more, of course ... but I'll leave it like that.
Check back tomorrow for my preview of the weekend.
Cheers,
BBallRef
