Heartland Conference
It’s Sunday morning and I’m sitting here with a cup of coffee reflecting on my clinic experience yesterday before ESPN’s “The Sports Reporters” comes on TV (my Sunday morning ritual).
I attended the Heartland Conference this weekend at Ball State University. About 40 officials from 5-6 states gathered in Muncie, Indiana yesterday. It was a well-organized event combining film review and field work over a full 8 hour day.
The film review centered around a set of plays scripted from Dan Romeo. “Dr. Dan” is a referee in the Mountain West and also a dentist, hence his moniker. Dr. Dan compiles a series of plays each year and Larry Snyder, Heartland’s Supervisor of Football Officials, was fortunate enough to obtain a copy. The session, entitled “You Make The Call” put the participants into crews with a basic representation of each position in a 7-man crew. The morning consisted of reviewing about 14 of the 26 plays. Wish we had more time, but the discussion was healthy and it gave the seminar attendees a great chance to talk philosophy and judgement on a wide variety of play situations.
After lunch, we broke out by positions and hit the field. I attended the “short wing” session, or line of scrimmage officials. Brian Bollinger, a Line Judge in the Mid Atlantic Conference; did a fantastic job of walking through some of the differences you see when making the move from high school to college. We covered LOS mechanics in detail and this session gave great insight into what it takes to officiate at the NCAA level.
We returned to the class room to wrap up the day. Larry Snyder gave us his list of What it Takes to Succeed at the NCAA and NFL level. To keep this post short, I’ll cover the first three areas here and finish this up in a few days.
What It Takes to Become a Successful Football Official – At Any Level
- Study Rules of the Game
- Rule Book
- Tests & Quizzes
- Ask Other Officials
- Quiz a Buddy
- Never Stop Learning
- Study Mechanics of Game
- CCA Mechanics Manual
- Camps & Clinics
- Philosophy
- Attend area meetings/rules study groups (Do any of you do this now?)
- Surround yourself with better officials
- Its hard to soar with the eagles, when you are surrounded by turkeys.
Part Two (continued in a few days)
- Watch film – Imperative
- Experience – How much is enough
- What You Have Control Over
That’s it for now, gang. I’ll finish this list later in the week. June is already here and that means football is just two months away!!!!
Be the Best on the Field
Todd
