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Dear Beginning Official,
MOA strives to provide Omaha area high schools with the
highest quality official’s possible. In order to meet these goals, MOA
encourages its members to attend preseason-training camps, review NSAA
examinations, and attend all MOA meetings. However, one of the biggest
challenges MOA faces in meeting the area’s demand for quality officials is
training and retaining new officials. Every year new officials register
with NSAA and join our organization, yet less than one third of these
officials remain register longer than a one year.
Last basketball season, in order to encourage new
officials to continue in officiating and to provide them with training
critical to a beginning referee, MOA developed and tested a mentoring
program. The program consisted of MOA board members and metro varsity
officials pairing up with one or two first to fifth year officials. The
experiment was extremely successful. The mentors provided the “rookies”
with guidance and support. The rookies felt more comfortable on the court,
improved rapidly, provided MOA with great feedback for developing a
permanent mentoring program, and most importantly, enjoyed their
officiating experience.
MOA wants to slowly build on our successes of last
year, expanding the mentoring program from one group of four mentors of
four groups of four mentors. Each group would consist of one board member
mentor from last year and three other mentors. As a mentoree, you will be
paired with a mentor in one of the four groups. Your mentor will observe
two to three of your games, answer questions throughout the season, invite
you to attend one or two of their pregame sessions and varsity contests,
and meet with your mentoring group two to three times to discuss
officiating generally and give you the opportunity to experience the
camaraderie of being and official.
MOA realizes you may be nervous as a beginner to be
observed by an experienced and to ask another for guidance. However, last
years mentoree’s quickly became very comfortable with their mentor’s.
Everyone involved in this program is in it to improve basketball
officiating in the Omaha area and make your experience fun and rewarding.
MOA also realizes we area asking you to make a rather large commitment
during a very busy time of year for basketball officials. MOA will do what
it can to accommodate scheduling conflicts between you and your mentor to
make the program as successful as possible. However, we only want
mentorees who are willing to commit to becoming a better official.
We hope you share MOA’s commitment to providing quality
officiating. If you area interested in being a mentoree, please fill out
the enclosed form and return it to the above address.
Thank you for you time.
Sincerely,
Midwest Officials Association
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