Doubleheader this weekend
After a long weekend of watching and coaching young referees last week, this week I will referee on both Saturday and Sunday.Both games are not too far away from where I live, so I won't have much trouble travelling. Still I will stay in a hotel after game one and take a train to the City of game two on Sunday morning. Only this time it is a two hour trip, not six or seven as usual.
What do I expect? Game one: Two good teams, one of them still unbeaten, a fairly small gym, sold out (3000), and a close game with the home team relying on their energy and team spirit, while the other team has the bigger names on its roster. Game two: Two teams that didn't start their season too well. Though, the home team won a huge game against one of the top teams in the league on the road last week.
Personally, I think that the two most interesting aspects of these upcoming games will be the headcoaches of the teams (and their behavior/style of coaching and communicating with the referees) and the crews in which we will referee. These coaches are either well known for their hot temper, or for their finesse and their ability to outsmart not only the other headcoach but also the referees while being the nicest person you could've imagined, ever. All of them have been coaching or playing in this league for many years now, so they know us as well as we know them. And that makes working with them very interesting, not to say difficult.
And then, there will be some interesting referee crews, too, I'd like to say. The first one is straight forward, one high profile crew chief, probably the best known in the league, and two fairly young referees. I think there won't be any problems in this crew. Everybody knows his role on the team and will do what's best for the team. In my second game, on the other hand, things might be a bit more complex. I don't want to make a self-fulfilling prophecy here, but with a very young crew chief, and a referee on his side who is 20 years older (but not nearly as talented or successful), and me of course ;) this could go anywhere. Sometimes our ego gets in the way of a good team performance, and one of the situations where this is most likely to happen is when two or more people meet with different views regarding their roles and their relationship. Even though the three referees always need to work together as a team of equally important crew members to be successful, teams also do need a crewchief with leadership quality and who will be respected by the others as a "primus inter pares" (First among equals). So, everybody must agree on their respective roles and competencies. If you have a different opinion here, please feel free to comment. I'd love to hear what you think about it. By the way, this is not only between the crew chief and a referee. I had a game myself, where I screwed everything up, because I didn't think much of the other referee and couldn't trust him the way I should've done. This led to wrong long distance calls from my side, and cost us the game, in the end. Fortunately we had a psychologist there as a referee coach, who helped us sort things out after the game.
Ok, I think I will post my goals for the upcoming games later today or tomorrow morning before I leave.
So long, cheers.
BBallRef
posted by BBallRef @ 10/10/2008 02:29:00 PM
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