Now that we are nearing the beginning of 2009, its time to bring in a new administration in the Texas Section--and its also a good time for us to evaluate our status as TEXAS OFFICIALS.
Please send us your comments and evaluations in these areas:
1. Your overall evaluation of the TRAINING PROGRAMS.
2. Your overall evaluation of the OFFICIALS SCHOOLS.
3. Your overall evaluation of the SECTIONAL CHAIRMAN AND TEXAS SECTION LEADERSHIP.
4. Our biggest strength in Texas.
5. Our biggest weakness in Texas.
Only when we are willing to honestly evaluate can we move into greater realms of excellence.
Send us your comments (with your name or anonymously) and they will be published.
11 comments:
Training Programs: Official's training programs (excluding certification schools) are inconsistent and the few and very far between ones are done on a voluntary basis as veteran official's can squeeze in the time to develop newer officials. With everyone's busy schedule, who has the time to do this? Alan Jones and Mike Flynn participated in a volunteer training session earlier this year. Even with little time in training, these 2 officials are eager, motivated and GOOD! They look to veteran officials, they listen, and they learn what to do and what not to do...They've been responsible for their OWN training. We're lucky to have them both in our ranks and I hope we can keep them. Also I'd like to send out kudos to Baylor for their most recent ITA training!
A formal USTA Training department with a corporate curriculum is definitely in order along with all the financial support for the department. This is a HUGE multi-million dollar business with no real planned, nor led training organization. Given the 2009 budget constraints of the USTA, I don't think any of us will see this happening anytime in the near or distant future.
Certification Schools: It's a good time to come together as a group and learn from one another. The networking part of the class is fun as well as the dinner and drinks that follow :-) Thoughts and suggestions: The schools can be streamlined and specialized sessions scheduled for new(er) officials, while veteran officials are certified less often (we do some of this now). Online re-certification could be utilized and attendance to formal certification training could be reduced to 1 time every 3-5 years. Training CD's could be made available to officials with online tests forwarded to the School's Coordinator or a designate. We need to make our certification process easier by having multiple methods available to certify. Some methods depending on their convenience (don't require in person attendance)could incur a cost...others not. Unless we try some new things, we won't know what works and what doesn't.
Texas Section leadership: I work frequently with the Texas Section. I've always received friendly, responsive service, with several (Bonnie Vona, Steve Cobb, Renae Friedrichsen, Melissa Chambers) going out of their way to help. Messages are returned promptly and they are a good support system. I'm pleased that Bonnie is "one of us" and supports us to the greatest extent possible.
Sectional Chairman: I have been very disappointed with the discussions I've been privy to, copies of private emails that have been distributed to others, which were never intended for other's eyes and the drama created by speaking about a fellow official when they are not present to defend themselves. These things should not happen. If this can happen to one of us, it can and probably will happen to more of us. It came as no surprise to me that the drama unfolded as it did. It's rather sad because we've lost a very strong leader in our certification schools.
Biggest Strength: Our love of tennis keeps us going and striving to be better. It's certainly not the money!
Biggest Weakness: I can think of 2 equally big: 1. Our eat their own mentality. Many officials are insecure in their own skin so in order to make them "feel" better, they find it necessary to degrade or re-educate one of their peers. Corporate America is like this, but not to this high a degree. Tennis officiating is right up there with the nasty politics of a presidential race...and #2 the current training process whereby we EVALUATE FIRST, and use this information to THEN TRAIN. Our national and sectional evaluators continue to evaluate first as the method for training. Can you imagine giving someone a grade in Algebra before they're taught how to do it? I find evaluations pretty useless except that it gives someone a job to be paid for. You receive the same numbers, and the same spill unless you're considered a "golden child". I know of no other organization that tests first, then trains. Is it any wonder that we "eat our own"? We've set the process up that way from the get go!
Here's my comments:
1) TRAINING PROGRAMS - Do we have Training Programs in Texas? I guess I'm not aware of any bonefide "official training programs" other than what occurred down at Baylor a couple of weeks ago. From what I understand, that was an excellent training session but was NOT endorsed by the Texas Section. As far as I know, it was the only training session with any media coverage.
2) OFFICIALS SCHOOLS - I did not attend a school in Tejas the last two years, but I did attend a National school the year before that. All I can say is that I will do everything I can to avoid another National school. They are way too long and boring with very little value added material covered.
3) SECTIONAL CHAIRMAN AND TEXAS SECTION LEADERSHIP - I can't comment on this subject since I have absolutely no idea what the Chairman and other Leadership actually accomplish. There is no communication other than what appears on this blog. Have meetings been held? Is there an Officials Committee? If so, where are the minutes posted so the natives can have a litle insight into what our leaders are thinking. If that is any indication, then my feeling is we definitely need a CHANGE. Please communicate, communicate, communicate. I feel like I'm a mushroom growing in a big pile of poop.
4) BIGGEST STRENGTH - The number of experienced officials willing to think outside of the box to help lessor officials.
5) BIGGEST WEAKNESS - Now that I think about it, a total lack of Leadership and Communication from the Texas Section. This must be caveated by a perceived lack of leadership from the National Office as well. The latest National newsletter was a waste of electrons, but at least minimal effort was expended to broadcast it to the natives. I can't say the same for anything coming out of Texas. It appears we are in the middle of a huge black hole. If you navigate to the Texas Section - Officials homepage, you can see that the last newsletter was from SUMMER 2006. Do the match yourself!
I hate to sound negative, but it is almost impossible to express positive thoughts when all indicators are pointing towards the south end of a horse traveling north, if you know what I mean.
Who has the authority to appoint the Texas Chairman and Officials Committee? From what I understand from reading the old blog, the Texas Section is not very happy with officiating throughout the State. Maybe they need to look down the hall and clean house.
IMHO
Training Programs: B
Schools: A-
Texas Section Leadership: B
Sectional Chairman: D-
Biggest Strength: Size and organization.
Biggest Weakness: Attitudes of officials.
Here are my thoughts:
1) Training programs are fair around the state but much better in the larger cities like Austin, Houston, and DFW. The leadership in Austin and our Sectional Chairman have abdicated their responsibility to the local chairpersons.
2) Schools are excellent and lots of good venues and locations. We should find a way to do most of it on the internet though since we do live in a modern world.
3) Texas Section Leadership is well organized, polite, and moderately effective.
4) Texas Section Chairman of Officials. I didn't know we had one since I've never heard from him or seen anything he has done.
5) Biggest strength. Our size and organization.
6) Biggest weakness. Probably lack of communication from our elected and appointed leaders.
Great input from you guys!
Be sure to send in your honest evaluations and we will honor your anonymous status.
Randy
Stinky,
The Sectional Chairman is appointed by the President of the USTA Texas Section. The outgoing President is Ben Eschleman and the new President is Bob Rubel. The Sectional Chairman serves at the pleasure and approval of the President and can be removed by the President.
The Officials Committee members are appointed by the President.
Hope this helps.
Randy
I'll probably be doing a posting on this issue in the near future so be sure to stay tuned.
1. We don't have nearly enough training programs. The few we do have are good, i.e., the Chair Academy in Plano, and I've heard good things about Chuck's training week-end in Waco. We need to develop more things in this line.
When I was starting out on the lower levels of the professional circuit, bunny williams, a supervisor and former chair/line umpire herself, had what she called "bunny's boot camp" every morning before we started the day.
We'd go in early (and everyone was required to attend) and talk about what had happened the previous day or anything she wanted to clarify for us. It was the best learning experience I have had anywhere that was not one on one.
It seems to me that it would be well worth a referee's time and effort to hold a "morning meeting" to tell his/her officials how he wants things handled, the paperwork that needs to be done, where things are, and discuss any situations which may have happened during the event, as well as any questions people have. If you are qualified to be a referee, you are qualified to instruct those who work with you. As for the excuse that it makes a longer day, yes it does, but we are professionals and we are responsible to take every opportunity to learn everything we can to do a better job.
2. The Texas Schools are excellent in their accessibility and staff. The curriculum, however, is lacking. In my opinion we need to do more "hands on" teaching, less watching of stuff on a screen (which puts everyone to sleep most of the time) and more on the court work. One of our goals has been to try to write a section of the curriculum for the Texas Section, which would deal with issues strictly related to grass roots tennis, because the national curriculum is so skewed to the work that happens at higher level events, and include it at the Texas schools. Bruce has been talking to the "higher ups" about this -- they are dubious. We don't want to go ahead and do it if national isn't going to count it for people's certification.
As "Anonymous #1" said, the class should be about working together and learning from each other as well as just being talked to, and, folks, like it or not, this takes time, but time which would be well-spent.
For some time, I have advocated that we run certification schools every other year, which would save us all loads of time and the section money, bind the FAC in a looseleaf binder format, so that new changes could be printed and mailed out and just substituted in. Just doing these two things would make it possible to reassign a fraction of the money we spend on yearly schools to run our own clinics in different areas of the state.
3. The Section leadership is average. There isn't enough communicating between the Section office and the officials at large. Problems become too big before they are addressed. And the job of Section Officials Chair is too big for one person. It needs to be minimum two, and ideally three people, each with different targets of the job. No one person can do all that needs to be done and still make his/her bills.
4. We love the game and constantly try to do better in our handling of it.
5. The latest spates of back-biting and tale-telling and judgment without having FACTS. As long as I've been in officiating, people trying to protect their jobs and territory have maligned the work of others behind their backs. I know -- I have been the target of that lots of times. If we could deal with one another honestly and fairly, even if we don't particularly like one another, things would go a lot smoother. We should respect each other as comrades trying to accomplish the same goal, even if it is in different arenas.
My last comment is for Anonymous #1. We have been working very hard to get sectional evaluating, which I believe is one of our best training tools, back into the mainstream. Some time ago, the national T/E's decided that sectional evaluations wouldn't "count", so the sectional programs died. Our current goal is to have more evaluators available to more events to accomplish some of the training sessions I mentioned above. In doing that, we can tailor a clinic to the needs in that area and have a chance to answer questions one on one. Do evaluators get paid? Yes, they do, just as instructors get paid for teaching schools, but most would do it for free if they could break even on expenses. Gas prices and accomodation expense being what they are, no one can afford to assimilate that kind of money into his/her own personal budget. I am signing my name to this, so if you read it and would like me to come to your area and help with some training or evaluating, let me know. I'll do whatever I can to help.
If the goal of the evaluator is to train and not "evaluate" then why are they not called instructors or trainers.
It would appear you Texas Officials need to start a empeachment proceedings and take a collectively signed petition to Bob Rubel for immediate action.
What other pressure can you guys place on the Texas Section to implement positive change?
On second thought, litigation would be another option if the Texas President elects not to take action and remedy the situation.
This would definitely draw attention to the problem, which doesn't seem to be happening at this moment.
...and no, I'm not being negative. I tend to think of myself as a realist! Sorry if I stepped on someone's toes, but when all else fails, a young hungry lawyer can come in real handy. I bet you could even start a class-action lawsuit based on some of the comments I've been reading including frank discussions with some of the Texas officials I know personally.
HAVE A GREAT DAY!!!
1.Your overall evaluation of the TRAINING PROGRAMS.
A. The chair training I attended in Plano as part of the NJCAA Tournament was outstanding.
B. I learned to call lines ‘flying by the seat of my pants’. Wish I could have attended a training program, but tenured officials have helped greatly.
2. Your overall evaluation of the OFFICIALS SCHOOLS.
A. Need more opportunity for time to discuss the unusual situations (not in FAC) that tenured officials have encountered. I always learn a great deal from these folks.
B. Looking up questions/answers in FAC is great! I’ve learned how to use the rule book.
C. The videos are weak at best.
D. All of the trainers I have encountered did an excellent job because they were flexible with the material based on the experience of and questions from the group.
3. Your overall evaluation of the SECTIONAL CHAIRMAN AND TEXAS SECTION LEADERSHIP.
A. I don’t know who any of these people are or what they do.
4. Our biggest strength in Texas.
A. Most officials are good people who love the game.
5. Our biggest weakness in Texas.
A. Too many closed cliques among officials and referees.
B. Communication is inconsistent at all levels. Randy’s Blog has been the best source of information I have had since becoming an official.
David Fleuriet
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