Saturday was the annual Summer Clinic in Stockton. We met at 5:00AM to make the 7:00AM start time. We did not finish until after 3:00PM. It was a long friggin day.
The clinic combines training sessions with the qualifying exam. The association (called The ORG) takes this meeting so seriously that if you do not attend, you will either get no games, or have reduced schedule. It's a big deal.
During the clinic we learned we are getting an increase on the game fees. The feedback from the coaches is they see we are improving and feel the raise is justified. Good news.
During one of the meetings the leaders asked all the new officials to stand. Eight stood-up. Then one year guys - eight more. Then two and three years. We were told this accounted for forty-six out of 142 guys. Thirty-three percent of the Org has less than four years. That's hard to believe. We need more people. And the coaches want us to go to seven man mechanics. We do too, but we need more bodies.
The training consists of new rule review and lots of film. This year was much better than last year. The film was better quality and the plays we reviewed were very black and white. What I mean is the examples for hitting a Defenseless Player, or Chop Block were very easy to see and make it very clear what to watch for.
At one point we broke out into position specific meetings. The Umpire group was lead by Carl Paganelli Coordinator of Officials for the Mid-American Conference. We walked through multiple play scenarios covering what we should be keying on and what he looks for when rating an official (upgrades and downgrades). Then we reviewed more film focusing on what the Umpire was looking at... and most often what he was missing.
We got into a lengthly debate with Carl on Punts. The issue was how long to spend watching play on the line of scrimmage verses watching flyers hitting the strikezone. We felt if we have two players going at one another and the white hat is with kicker we cannot just spin to watch the action in the strickzone. We need to watch these two players. The counter argument was statistically there are less fouls with these two players than with fouls on players in the strikezone and the fouls in the strikezone are typically more volient and safety related. If you are going to err, err on the side of the two players who are only going to hurt themselves. I'm not sure I buy this. Carl did not and said so to our corrdinator.
There were two tests; one on mechanics and the second on rules. The former was pretty easy. Missed one out of twenty five. The second test was very difficult and I missed three.
I'm glad this part of the season is over. I should get my schedule by Aug 1st.
