Friday 14 February 2025

Day 2 Session 1 – Next generation of referees will be always better than previous one! – Carl Jungebrand

As recommended by Kuba 7.15 the group was running today as a fresh start of the day, having some stretching, lead by Veronika and Sergey.  First important decisions we had to make today before going to the court was what to eat for breakfast, as this buffet in Gloria Hotel is honestly spoiling us heavily 🙂

So fed and happy we went to first session by Carl Jungebrand.

Carl was talking about raising standards of quality decisions by making analytical decision vs emotional decision. Also pointing that the call shall be fast, correct, simple and understandable. As referees we are not a random generator of calls! You need to practice, use your muscle memory, only 10k repetitions to take the action into the storage of the muscle memory J

Take away from the lecture: Stay with the play until the end of the action – mentally and physically

Remember the basics – In NBA they teach the referee how to run, we thought in the world cup referees how to blow the whistle.

As a second lecture of the day we had a video clips from Costas from Euroleague. So following the lecture of Carl, Costas said: “Whatever you have learned about psychological approach you need to transform to the court and be ready to use your whistle.” So we started to watch the videos and then the discussion opened. Travelling, offensive, defensive, sometimes need to see the play more than 10 times. Costas said:  “If we have to see one situation more than 10 times then the referee made the right call!!!” Small joke, but the important thing here is that what we agree here, how to call a situation, we need to stick to it and be consistent, same Costas is doing with the coaches after the end of the season.

“What we are teaching is one color, if we say for today is red than red it is!

As third lecture of the day we had for the first time at the REFEREE.PL an instructor from Canada – Stephen, who is one of the best active referees in the world getting nominations for the top tournaments. Stephen started officiating in the age of 28! He made tremendous career. One of the first’s things he said was that to meet your goal you need to know what you have to do for it, and one of the things on the list is to come to such camps!! Then Steve told us some stories from his personal experience that was supporting his idea of officiating. Steve: “Mark your presence, inspire your confidence, for your all referees team! Leadership and accuracy!” Then he said the obvious, but not all of us think this way: “Officiating is nothing more than taking care of business.  At work you know what to do, threat game the same way!” Steve talk was very emotional and found a way to campers, you could see everyone listened with eyes wide open and we have excided the time for the lecture by nearly 40 min. Then Steve underlined in the context of coming matches: “What you do at 11 am camp game is what you will do at your top level game!!!” So all the guys were getting ready before we start the tournament today.

After lunch there was some officiating to be done 🙂 Tournament has started and crews were nominated. Only missing the referees from Qatar, whose plane was late, but then happily they arrived and we had the summary of the day all together having some feedback from the instructors.

So for the next day remember:

Officiating not to make mistakes – safe refereeing! Best leagues in the world are not looking for safe referees, take the risk!!!