Re: Refs at Nationals

[Todd <tdh@vbref.org>]

dgrantxlvb@aol.com (DGrantXLVB) writes:
> I wanted to briefly comment on something that I noticed at Nationals
> this year.  I was playing and this was my first Nationals, but I
> wanted to get some opinions as I know some of you were there. It was
> my opinion and that of several other players that I talked to that
> the officiating seemed well below the level one would expect at a
> National tournament. I am specifically talking about the lack of
> calls on ball handling errors by people setting the balls with their
> hands. Was there an effort made to loosen up calls.

Yes and no.  My subjective observation is that calling tight ball
handling is becoming increasingly declasse in officiating circules.
However, I've not been told that USAV is trying to loosen ball
handling.

Above all, consistency is the metric that raters are drilling home.
I'm not sure what the raters are being told wrt this issue.  

> I saw many missed net calls by down officials because they were
> following the play on the ball and not the net.

The new techniques being adopted for 2nd referees require R2's to
expand their view to be watching both the net, and the play developing
through the net. 

        http://www.xnet.com/~schneid/techniques/index.html

R2's are becoming increasingly responsible for signalling and
whistling back-row attacking violations, and this requires that the R2
must follow the play.

Everyone is still adjusting to this new technique which has made the
2nd referee's job much harder than the 1st referee's job IMHO.  Net
calls should not be missed as a result of these new techniques, but
there will be a transition period in which R2's learning these
techniques will miss net calls as a result of slow visual transitions
during the attack.  I'm among these officials, and can sympathize.

However, it was my impression that these new techniques that expand
the R2 responsibilities were not to be used until next year's
PAVO/USAV seasons.  Hence, it's surprising to me that you noticed
these techniques at this year's national tournament.  I've been told
NOT to use the new R2 techniques at this year's junior national
tournament.

--
                  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...."