Re: Coaches...Make them go to rules interp?

[Todd <tdh@vbref.org>]

cfjcd@ux1 (Julie C. Dietz) writes:
> 
> 
> The Gateway Region requires teams to go through a certification process
> for officiating and scorekeeping for players and coaches.  
> 
> 
> DO other regions than Gateway require this?

Yes.

I've been in two USAV regions (Lone Star in Central Texas and Great
Lakes here in Northern Illinois, where Michael plays).  There are vast
differences between these regions WRT officiating.

Lone Star required every USAV adult team (and Juniors as well, I do
believe) to have at least one certified referee and one certified
scorer by the time Regionals rolled around.  That's how I got
started..in my first season player Men's B.

LSR held 2 or 3 clinics during the season designed to get players from
0 to Provisional in one day (with ~50% success rate).  A verbal clinic
and rules interpretation was given in the morning.  In the afternoon,
everyone would be rated (by Regional+ officials) from the stand and R2
positions, officiating games composed of the other clinic
participants.  Officials had to be rated at a clinic every 2 years at
a minimum.

In Great Lakes, there is no officials certification requirement for
the teams.  Team captains and coaches are not required (or actively
encouraged for that matter) to attend interpretation clinics.  Since
the interpretation clinics are geared towards certification, and since
certification requires a good eal of effort to obtain and
maintain....there is a huge gap between player/refs and certified
officials.

As a result, the average quality of a certified official in Great
Lakes is worlds better than in Lone Star.  However, the quantity of
certified officials as a percentage of the player population is MUCH
lower.  The upside is that the Region requires the use of certified
officals for semifinal/final matches of sanctioned tournaments.
Furthermore to the benefit of certified officials, your ratings will
be done by outstanding national officials.

Clearly there are tradeoffs here.  I maintain that GLR certified
officals are by and large outstanding, and much better than the
en-masse Provisional officials in LSR.  However the quality of
grassroots player/referees is abyssmal in GLR.  As an adult player
subjected to pool-play refereeing, I find the GLR experience worse
than in LSR...because there's no guarantee that the player/ref on the
stand during pool play has ever stepped foot into a rules
interpretation clinic here.  Sure if you get to semis and finals,
you'll get good officiating from the certified officials...but for
most of the day, you deal with ugliness.

This abysmal quality of non-certified refs extends beyond USAV
competition as well.  Most adult leagues in the area are not
officiated by GLR certified officials...and it shows.  I've been
discussing solutions to this problem with the region officers.  My
proposal bascially consists of certified officials conducting informal
ratings and critiques of grassroots league refs.


The solution to the USAV pool play problem that started this
thread...would involve a few player and coach oriented officiating
clinics.  Should they be mandated for at least one member of each
team?  Perhaps...I'm not sure if busy juniors coaches would show up
otherwise.  

OTOH those who would run a player-oriented clinic are extremely busy
covering and coordinating match assignments, as well as doing thorough
reviews and training of the sizeable corps of certified officials.



--
                  Todd H.   tdh@vbref.org
USAV Regional Referee, Great Lakes Region, Palatine, IL
Todd's Volleyball Referee Page http://www.io.com/~tdh/vball/
"So you're a Ref and an engineer? Oh that explains it...."