Carl Jungebrand fra Finland, renommert dommer i FIBA og Euroleague, har skrevet en interessant artikkel om viktigheten av psykologisk styrke hos dommere. Hans brede erfaring som dommer på alle nivåer i internasjonal basketball, har etter 24 år med dømming gitt ham en svært god forståelse av dette vikige feltet innen basketballdømmingen. Nylig publiserte vi første del av denne svært interessante artikkelen som av praktiske årsaker er delt i to. I dag kommer andre og siste del av artikkelen.
THE IMPORTANCE OF PSYCHOLOGICAL STRENGTH IN OFFICIATING (2/2)
By Carl Jungebrand (FIN)
Se også del 1/2.
WHAT IS OFFICIATING?
Try first to define the term “officiating” as simple as possible (when you have your answer move on).
People often make the mistake of turning small issues into overly big and important things. At many officiating events we talk about how many factors are parts of officiating and how difficult an official’s job is. Sometimes officiating is turned into a weird science that includes so many factors that realistically it would be impossible to manage all of them successfully. Often there are also many explanations for failure, but most often the reason is that the official wasn’t psychologically or physically ready for a situation.
Based on that assumption, I would say that officiating is nothing but:
- Knowing how to anticipate what will happen
- Understanding what is happening now
- Reacting correctly to what has happened
Understanding the food chain of basketball will also help one to assume an official’s role. As an example: a player develops something new for his game (a new move, jumping higher, new shooting style), then the coach assimilates this new ability into his game plan and then the official, after seeing the new situation, adjusts his officiating so that this new element is within his controlled environment. I doubt that a coach or an official can create something that a player hasn’t already done. This is good to remember when thinking of why we are on the court, and what our role in the overall scheme truly is.
MEMORY BANK
How can we strengthen our psychological attributes so that we can control the action on the court? I believe that failure strengthens our mode of operation, if we understand that it’s a part of our regular business and we know how to accept it. Naturally, the first step in development is to admit our deficiencies and be ready to correct them. It’s not always easy because officials have strong personalities, just as players and coaches do. This is top-level athletics we’re talking about.
Most “failure” situations we’ve learned the hard way - through experience. Another less painful way is to learn through others’ mistakes. I don’t even know how many things I’ve learned from watching other officials in action. I’ve always tried to assimilate good attributes from other officials while not forgetting that we are all individuals and we have our own personalities, and we can’t forget that (whether or we want to or not). This means that someone else’s good traits or skills may not be suited for you! Sometimes you see young officials trying to copy everything from other officials – even their bad attributes.
But we can’t always be in the stands watching a game. Audio-visual material is a good additional tool that should be used when possible. It’s important to build a memory bank of situations that you might face as an official. By strengthening your memory bank you can also increase your likelihood of making the right decision under pressure. Top athletes often use this same technique to improve their own performance.
EXPECTATIONS
Another thing that helps us understand peoples’ reactions towards an official’s performance is that they each have their own expectations for any product, service or performance. If the expected and the actual meet, a person is usually satisfied with the result.
So what are peoples’ expectations towards officiating? Proactively we can say that it’s almost always unreasonable. Most sports fanatics expect officials to be 100% correct. If this happens, it’s deemed normal. This is why we only hear about officials failing, not succeeding.
When discussing the topic with people in sports, evaluate the following example from basketball. In a normal game, the officials will make about 100 calls. One can ask, if 20 of the calls were obviously wrong – which would mean some sort of catastrophe every second minute – what would a spectator’s opinion be. Most often the answer is, “the officiating is bad.” In my mind the public’s opinion would actually be much worse, “total failure.” Still, on average, the official would have been correct in 80% of the calls.
In a normal game, the usually margin of 2-5 clearly wrong calls, which using the previous scale would mean 95-98% success rate. For a player, that percentage would mean a (exceptional) great game. For officials, you also have to consider the times you don’t blow the whistle, meaning there are actually 200-250 decisions to be made, which means your rate gets even higher...
A SUCCESSFUL OFFICIAL IS PROACTIVE
To close I’d like to stop and consider being proactive as a part of a successful official’s operations. Proactive means taking initiative and being active. Basically it means that an individual should make decisions based on his own choices instead of outside factors. Proactive people guide their lives based on their own decisions and don’t follow outside influences. Sometimes in officiating we meet similar situations, such as when a certain game didn’t meet expectations.
To say “they played dirty, they acted unsportsmanlike” are normal words to hear from an official sometimes after the game. What the official really is trying to do is pass along responsibility for his or her own failure to others. A proactive response would be “why did you let them play dirty?” A healthy dose of self-criticism is key to the development of an official, so an official should first try to analyze those factors that he can control himself. Look in the mirror before trying to find external reasons for failure.
Being proactive could be an official trying to guide the game’s flow towards the nature of the game. By anticipating situations or immediately correcting bad developments will greatly factor the future flow of the game. Most players appreciate this type of official. In all honesty, being proactive is much more taxing and tiring than just observing and ruling from the side with a ‘heavy hammer’. But this proactive effort will always lead to results that will keep all parties happier.
Winners always take initiative and actively affect their own environment – in any level and actions – they are the winners, because they control what will happen next – not the actions them.
A small saying that winners can always use:
“Others are doing well. What can I do to achieve the same?”