Healthy Habits: Making Fundamental Judgments
Officials can develop healthy habits that have nothing to do with streamlining their diet or counting calories. Repeated practices or habits pertain to particular games. Here are some tips to help you learn good habits and ways to practice the practices — if not to make them perfect, at least to polish their luster.
Let’s begin with the most difficult practice in baseball and softball: calling balls and strikes. All we need is a pitcher and a catcher, and they don’t have to be regular players, either. Anyone who can toss an object will do. Put something on the floor of your living room or out in the driveway to simulate home plate and go to work. It’ll help to have a pretend batter too, one who’ll never swing at a pitch.
Crouch down behind the catcher and have the pitcher arm them in — a wad of paper, a wiffle ball, anything that flies reasonably straight. Then make your calls over and over. Have someone critique your stance, your reactions and your judgment.
Of course it’ll help if real players pour in real pitches. Set-ups like that scene, though, can be part of association meetings, several dozen members going at once: pitcher, catcher and phantom hitter. Umpires themselves can take turns being the players and other umpires can umpire. Chances are, such practice will lead to steady improvement.
One of the hardest plays to cover in baseball or softball is a sharp hit to the outfield with runners on base. The difficult part is the spread of the field and the shortage of officials. That is, a ball may be hit so hard that one umpire must dash to the outfield to see whether a ball is caught on the fly. The home plate umpire can help, but must know how to help — when to move out from behind the plate, what base to cover and where to go for a subsequent play. All of those moves can be practiced: Put runners on bases and launch the ball out there, then rehearse the necessary adjustments.
Umpires can also work on calls at first base. Have someone hit infield grounders, let runners run and have umpires make the call at first base over and over. Hit shots down the foul line and have umpires make the fair or foul call. All elementary phases of baseball and softball can be simulated on a field — makeshift or real — so that umpires can practice and refine positioning and judgment.
To make a similar system work in basketball you almost need an actual court. Set up a one-on-one situation, just like players do when they’re working on their skills, and have officials practice calling fouls (as well as traveling and other ballhandling violations). Again, people critiquing can be of benefit and so can skilled or semi-skilled players. Many coaches would permit a corps of officials to come to a workout and referee one-on-one drills. Everybody involved would gain something, including players who’d obtain a good notion of what rights and restrictions they have.
Practice reporting fouls to the scorer’s table too. Practice hopping between players to forestall animosities after hard fouls. Practice getting the good angle on driving shooters so that you can view contact accurately.
Football officials don’t need a real team and needn’t be outdoors. You don’t even need a real ball. A Nerf ball will work just fine. Put a couple of pretend linemen, a snapper and a quarterback in an offensive alignment. Have the linemen commit a variety of false starts: forearm shivers, quick head tilts, body leans and sudden “lift-ups.” Officials have to react with flags, whistles and stop-the-clock signals. Teach flag-tossing techniques. Emphasize killing the clock. In real life many officials neglect to kill the clock on false starts and encroachment.
Have the ersatz quarterback engage in some machinations also, such as illegal head bobs, shoulder hunches and arm thrusts under the snapper. Another quarterback illegality is a no-pause silent count or “touch” signal. Many officials miss that violation, and it gives the team on offense a distinct edge in running a short-yardage play. It would be good to practice detecting that act.
Finally, have players stand up and confront one another in mock anger. The proper technique in any sport is to move rapidly to the players and order them to desist (screeching whistles are often ignored). Learn to use your voice. Practice gestures that encourage compliance.
Make a choice about putting hands on players. If the ball is on the ground or floor and players pile on, officials generally feel it a duty to peel them off. The policy in the pros is to pry players apart when they’re upright also. It’s often the one time officials put hands on players. You or your association should adopt a policy about that.
If you are uncomfortable about pushing players with your hands, try stepping between them and shouldering them out of the way. That can be a deliberately chosen technique. Try it in a make-believe setting. Also, rehearse addressing the individual that you feel is at fault or who needs direct counseling. Try to do it without pointing your finger and with a straightforward order, meaning don’t tip your head backward or thrust it in the aggressor’s face.
The thing about officiating habits is that they are sometimes embraced incorrectly in the first place, and then one has a hard time unlearning them. Once acquired, habits continue unabated, reinforcing themselves, if no one obliges us to adjust. They’ll never change unless some interceptive force stimulates a change. Many an official has declared, “I never knew I did that!” after seeing a video of a game he worked.
Lastly, only a closed mind will deny the possibility of refining old habits or acquiring ones that are new and improved. Getting out of a rut can be exhilarating. Helping someone else abandon a detrimental customary behavior can be equally satisfying.
Written by Jerry Grunska, Evergreen, Colo., a frequent contributor to Referee. This article originally appeared in the 4/01 issue.
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