* A male official in the Metroplex was officiating in a USTA tournament match between two men's doubles teams. On match point, team A hit the ball into team B's court. Team B considered the ball good and played the point. After the point was over, the official walked into the court and said, "the ball was out. Game, set, and match" even after all four players agreed the ball was good and noone had even questioned the call.
* An experienced official (not in the Metroplex) was standing at the net post in a major adult USTA tournament. The official clearly observed an incorrect call but did nothing. When questioned about his failure to overrule, he said, "I clearly saw the erroneous call but I was going to make the player ask me to do something before I was going to overrule."
These are just a few examples of our pressing need for better and perhaps more intense training. We have given some thoughts (and ways to pay for it) but apparently the time has come to find the money to pay for more officiating. Our previous blog post gives a concrete method for finding at least $10,000 to help pay for training and I'm sure there are others. We spend thousands of dollars sending evaluators around Texas when perhaps that money could be better spent on training.
The most highly trained officials we have are our REFEREES. Why not find them some money to help with training and let them train the new officials in their own areas. We don't have to import trainers and pay all those expenses when we have the best trainers right here with us--the ones who do the hiring and firing. They have the experience--now let's enable them to do the training...
The responsibility for developing and funding this lies squarely with our Sectional Chairman. At least he has authorized paying for some officials' training parts of Texas--and that's a good step but if its available for one part of the state, then it should be available for everyone.
Now let's see a better developed plan and program to help with our training...
8 comments:
Randy - I would be willing to bet that each of these officials in your scenarios would get these questions correct on a written test. The difference is in applying the rules rather than knowing the rules.
Training in knowledge vs. training in applicability are two totally different things.
I hope that the referees in each of these events had lengthy discussions with each of these officials. I hope they discussed: what the official saw, what they said, what the rule is, etc. I also hope they even did some role-playing and had the official practice what to say. I know it sounds silly, but if they practice saying it over and over it will be closer to becoming a habit.
Let's be careful about advocating for more knowledge-based training when that may not totally be the issue.
Knowing most of the Referees from the Metroplex, do you really want them to train new officials... really. Just think about it.
Are these new officials you are referring to in the first two instances? If so, then their shadowing was totally ineffective.
One way to fix this problem is to have an experienced "annointed" official to grade new officials capabilities during shadowing. If they fail to meet minimum qualificatinos, then they are not ready for prime time and must take remedial training.
Another useful tool would be to require the new officials to take additional situational testing to determine their tendencies for handling difficult questions. Again, if they fail, then remedial training should be the norm.
Those are some great ideas and comments. Personally, I don't think we need more knowledge-based training but instead more focus on reality training. It might even be good to do away with the open book testing and get back to having to pass a test in order to be an official. Seems that when we went to the open book format things got worse on the court.
The key statement is that we need to see some actual leadership from you know who. We haven't gotten any to date.
"I hope that the referees in each of these events had lengthy discussions with each of these officials. I hope they discussed: what the official saw, what they said, what the rule is, etc. I also hope they even did some role-playing and had the official practice what to say."
Madam or Sir, what fantasy land do you live in? I'd wager there wasn't a referee within 5 miles of those courts where the situations occurred? In many instances referees are a voice on the phone calling from another set of courts on the other side of town. Follow up and training from referees? You've got to be kidding.
Boy it sure sounds like Randy is getting anxious to start digging into that extra $10,000 he's found!!
Randy is anxious for the people who are doing the training to get paid for doing it. We have people in Dallas who do the Roving 101 classes month in and month out--for absolutely nothing.
I do plenty of training but I always pay people for roving and being trained. We don't pay for the chair training but they get the experience they need to be considered for ITA work.
And by the way, I don't get paid for doing training either.
Post a Comment