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ASSIGNOR ANNOUNCEMENTS

1.  Check your blocked dates.  If you become available on a date that was blocked, contact David or Don ASAP!
2. Contact schools one week in advance to confirm.
3. Crew chiefs are those listed first in Arbiter for tournaments.  You need to confirm all officials with the host school and obtain a tournament schedule to communicate to your team.
4. If it is one week or less prior to your tournament assignment and you have not heard from your Crew Chief–first official listed–please take the initiative to contact that Crew Chief to let her/him know you are confirmed for the tourney, day, date, time, location.
5. Please request information on partners, letting the Crew Chief know if you need to leave earlier before the tourney is over. (NOTE: All officials are expect to stay for the entire tourney. You may be asked to Line Judge Semis or Finals. GKCOA always requests pay–$15 per official–for this.) Please also let the Crew Chief know if you need to avoid officiating any particular school because of a potential conflict of interest.
6. SUBURBAN CONFERENCE V/JV OFFICIALS:  This reminder will be redundant for some and new for others. If you have an assignment from Suburban Conference, the start time shows a 7p start. It is vital to understand that there is a 530p JV match prior to this Varsity start time of 7p. Best practice is to contact the school one week ahead of time to confirm details. In addition, there may be assignments (rare) for which there is an earlier C Gold (formerly 9A match) connected to these assignments. Please confirm all details with the school and with your partner. Partner can be found by looking at your Arbiter Schedule page and clicking on the Game Number to the left.  If there are issues or questions, please contact Mark Bubalo. He is connected to the Suburban Conference assignments.
7. FROM DON GARD:  I wanted to give everyone a heads up about possbily being removed from games. I am working on giving our new officials games.  Nobody, at this time has done anything wrong, so please do not take the removal personal. We have numerous veteran officials who have a full schedule. If you are removed you will get a notice from the Arbiter. You will still show available if we need someone to fill in. I am hoping to have this process completed by mid week. I hope everyone has a great week!

 

MSHSAA DEADLINES

Online rules review – Aug. 30

Post-season application – Sept. 7

Part II Test – Sept. 10

All items located on http://www.mshsaa.org under your Officials tab

 

THE WINNETONKA JAMBOREE WEBCAST

We had a lot of fun putting this together, so we hope it’s beneficial to you as you prepare for the season.  We know that this is much more like a public access cable broadcast of “Wayne’s World” versus the slick production of Sunday Night Football, but for our first attempt at something like this, we’re pretty proud of what we did last Tuesday.  It’s 2 1/2 hours long, so just pick a random 15 minutes to watch, and hopefully there will be at least a couple of ideas for you to think about before you work your first match or as you work throughout the season.

 

THE DEBRIEF

We want to continue the debrief initiative because we all can learn from each other, no matter what the experience level is of our partner(s).  Try to carve out five minutes after your last match of the evening to discuss anything that came up that night.  If we do this properly, the GKCOA will continue to be the best association in the state!

IF YOU ARE OFFERING FEEDBACK: Critique the situation, not the person, accompany the critique with a compliment, be specific with feedback, give recommendations on how to improve

IF YOU ARE RECEIVING FEEDBACK:. Hit pause on your initial defensive reaction–it’s not personal, LISTEN for understanding, avoid saying “Yeah, but…” and giving a reason for why you made those decisions on the court, always thank the person offering feedback, and possibly arrange a time to follow up if the situation warrants.

We are all mentors and we are all mentees!  The intent of this practice is to help each other make each other better…not to cause conflict or hard feelings.

 

LITTLE THINGS ARE A BIG DEAL

At the meeting on Aug. 26, we went over a few items in the officials manual to make sure we’re doing properly.  If you weren’t there, take a few minutes to review the following little things prior to your first match–if you do these correctly, your match management will improve greatly:

1. P. 77–review how to signal net violations and how to signal the number of the offending player properly
2. P. 73-74–review the proper signal and whistle sequence on ending a set and ending a match
3. P. 73–review the proper sequence to conduct the deciding set coin toss

 

MSHSAA ANNOUNCEMENTS:

1. If you have court markings that are illegal, inform the home coach and host management, take a photo of it and email Dixie Ousley and Davine Davis to inform them of the issue.  Do not force a school to tape down proper lines or threaten not to play the match.  MSHSAA will receive your report and take action from there.
2. With the emphasis on the rule allowing teams to warm up on court between sets, the question has come up whether a varsity team can warm up between sets during the JV match.  This would be similar to the practice of a varsity basketball team shooting at halftime of the JV game.  MSHSAA has determined that will not be allowed in volleyball.  Only the team actually playing that match can warm up on court between sets.

 

NEXT MEETING:  Sun., Sept. 16 at WINNETONKA HIGH SCHOOL – no new officials meeting, main meeting will be 4:30-6:00pm.  This will be the last in-person meeting, as the final meeting will take place online.