I Referee Youth Basketball for 35 Dollars a Game. Here Is What It Is Like

Three winters ago our league director called me in a panic. Two referees had quit in one week, and there were 14 Saturday games with nobody to officiate them. I had coached for years and thought I knew the rules, so I said yes. I took a short online course, bought a striped shirt for 28 dollars and a whistle for 9, and started the next weekend.

I now referee about 40 games a season for youth leagues in our area. I am paid around 35 dollars per game. Here is what I have learned.

The rules you think you know

Within my first game I discovered I did not know the rules as well as I thought. The difference between a block and a charge depends on whether the defender had established legal guarding position before the offensive player started their upward motion. Traveling has more nuances than most coaches admit. And the three-second rule is something I had yelled about from the bench for years without really understanding when it starts counting.

Good referees spend hours studying, watching film and going to clinics. Our local association holds a meeting every two weeks during the season, where experienced officials review clips of tricky calls. I learned more about basketball in those meetings than in a decade of coaching.

Positioning is half the job

Most bad calls come from being in the wrong place, not from bad judgment. In a two-person crew, one referee stays ahead of the play near the baseline and the other trails behind. Each has an area of responsibility. When I was new, I watched the ball everywhere, which meant I missed what happened away from it. Now I focus on my area and trust my partner.

The bleachers

The hardest part is not the game. It is the adults. Parents yelling, coaches making sarcastic comments, and occasionally someone following an official to the parking lot. National surveys of officials point to verbal abuse as one of the main reasons people quit, and many leave within their first two or three years.

I have been lucky. The worst I have dealt with was a father who shouted that I needed glasses. I already wear contacts, which I told him at halftime. He laughed, and that defused it.

Why I keep doing it

• The kids are almost always respectful. They just want to play.
• It has made me a calmer coach, because now I know what it looks like from the other side.
• It is decent extra money for a Saturday, and good exercise.

What would help

If you are a parent, the best thing you can do for youth sports is to let the referees work in peace. If you are an adult who loves the game, consider signing up. Our league still cancels or delays games every season because there are not enough officials. One missed call at a game for 11-year-olds is not the end of the world. A cancelled game is.