Getting Your First Game: Insights and Strategies for New Football Officials with Jerry Letofsky

Ready to elevate your game as a new football official? We've got a treat for you.  Joel Pogar and Kirk Russell sit down with Jerry Letofsky, a seasoned Colorado assigner, who offers his guidance and insights into embarking on an officiating journey. Jerry sheds light on the exciting world of assigning, reveals how to land your first games, and shares tips on leveraging technology to your advantage. As we navigate the process, we also delve into the challenge of juggling officiating with a full-time job, and the professional way to handle game cancellations.

As we journey further, we delve into the nitty-gritty of confirming assignments and honing your officiating skills. Uncover the secrets to establishing rapport with host organizations and the mechanics of assignment confirmation. Get an inside look at the demanding role of the referee and learn how to upskill your rule knowledge for more significant games. We also underscore the essence of being an excellent crewmate and discuss professional growth strategies for sports officials. From the art of effective communication and owning your calls to the importance of being coachable and the value of post-game work, we cover it all. As a cherry on top, we engage in a stimulating discussion on the philosophies surrounding camps and clinics. So tune in and equip yourself with the tools to thrive in the world of football officiating.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:02

Welcome to your first downs, the podcast dedicated to helping new high school football officials.

Speaker 2: 0:08

Here are your hosts, joel Pogher and Kirk Russell, from the Colorado Football Officials Association. Hey everybody, welcome to week two of your first downs, where we try to help new officials get the best start they can on the football field. This is season one, episode two. I am your host, joel Pogher. I'm joined by my co-host, kirk Russell. How you doing today, kirk?

Speaker 3: 0:29

Good, thank you.

Speaker 2: 0:31

Kirk's on the road today so we might have a little bit of echo in the audio, but we'll try and fix that best we can. We are joined today by Mr Jerry Letofsky. So Jerry is an assigner here in Colorado and last week we talked about you know, how do you find your local association? How do I get signed up for classes? What can I expect as an official? We wanted to take the next step of that and really talk about how do I get games when you're ready to get out on the field? What is that assigning process? So, jerry, welcome to the podcast. Thanks for joining us today.

Speaker 1: 1:04

Thanks, joel and Kirk. It's great to be with you guys today. Thanks for inviting me.

Speaker 2: 1:07

So, jerry, I mean I'm ready to get on the field. I'm a new official, I've done my classes, I bought my uniform. What is the next step? For how do I get on the field? And you know what? Maybe even start with what does an assigner do. Let's start there what does an assigner do and then maybe go into how do I get a game.

Speaker 1: 1:22

That's a good question to start with. I think to begin with, sports officials are independent contractors. So that's one thing I kind of love about that is that as a sports official, you're your own boss. You can create your own schedule, you can work at the times that are convenient for you and you're responsible for everything about your performance. And so what the assigner is? He's the in-between between the event host, which in most cases is a high school or middle school or recreation league, and yourself is the independent contractor to try and get some work. So the assigner is your person that assigns the games to wherever you can work.

Speaker 2: 2:06

Great, now when I'm ready to get a game. I mean, I know this probably varies around the country and maybe even around the state when I'm ready to get a game. How does that work?

Speaker 1: 2:16

Well, there's many different ways you can pick up games. In today's world and with the latest technology, most designers have a system that you can log into and get games and get assigned to different games, and in the Denver metropolitan area we do multiple options to get games. The very first one is meetings that you go to. When you go to your local association meetings and get together, oftentimes the designers will bring their assignments with them and lay them out on tables and you can walk through and meet different officials and sign up for games that way. That's one way you get games.

Speaker 1: 2:49

Another way, and as technology is advanced, is most designers use a system where you can log on to websites and assign games to yourself. It's called a self-assigned feature, so this allows you to be in control of your own schedule and pick where you want to work and set your travel limits of how far you'll go, and you can block dates that you cannot work and even times that you can't work. And inside these systems of assigning you can really set up your parameters so that you can let the assigner know when you're available, and you need to do a good job of that as an official. So it takes some time to learn these different systems of how you do it, and it's a little bit different for each one.

Speaker 3: 3:30

Yeah, jerry, I know you have modernized a lot of the assigning efforts in the Colorado area and I hope we're able to reach other states outside Colorado and even within Colorado. I'm sure there's different ways of doing things. You actually assign for multiple levels of not just football, even other sports, and you've got it down. This technology you're using. I wonder if there's still some places around the country that the schools actually are directly hiring officials and they aren't fortunate enough to have an assigner like yourself with a system that is able to access that. I imagine you've interacted with some other states and maybe even in your previous work.

Speaker 1: 4:12

Yes, there's lots of different ways to get games and there's lots of different assigners and, as a young official just starting out, what you want to do is talk to your partners about how they're getting games, just like contractors talk to each other about where they can pick up work. You learn different places in your area of where you work and whatever levels you do you talk about where can I get some other work. A good example in Colorado, as Kirk was saying, aurora Sports Officials assigns most of the high school events, but if you're a young official, there's other opportunities. There's other youth leagues that you can join that have assigners and they have their own systems.

Speaker 3: 4:53

Jerry, a follow up to that. So we're on a mission here in Colorado to get more officials involved in the game. We've seen troubles with our numbers, we've had to move games off of Friday night and I know that is hard for assigners to scramble and make some adjustments. If I'm a brand new official and I finally figured out some of the connections I've made. And let's say I'm a banker and I work till typically five o'clock but I would like to start officiating and some of the sub varsity games started at three o'clock in the afternoon and now I'm going to get assigned to a game. Maybe I've got to take some time off for work, tell my boss that I'm going to go do this and then all of a sudden something as always, a business issue pops up and I need to make a call to you to change my schedule.

Speaker 2: 5:39

Kirk, I think you're talking about the dreaded T word from the signers turnbacks, when you accept a game and then you have to turn it back for some reason.

Speaker 3: 5:48

How do I avoid making all sorts of issues for you, or even myself, in having to make that change?

Speaker 1: 5:54

That's a good question because I, just, like any worker, think if you were a contractor and you were scheduled to go put on a new roof and then you called and said that you couldn't do it, so that's a big thing.

Speaker 1: 6:05

So with sports officiating it's a little bit different, in that it's not as big of a deal financially, but in terms of being able to find a replacement for you in a timely manner, that's difficult. So if you're a sports official and you need to cancel an event, the first thing you need to do is be courteous and responsible and respectful. Call the assigner that you need to cancel with and let them know right away. Hey, I can't make my game next week and I've got an issue that came up and I'm not going to be able to make it. If you would like me to reach out and maybe find another worker that can replace me, I'd like to offer that to you and then let that assigner decide whether or not they want help in finding a replacement. Oftentimes the assigner is going to be able to find the replacement for you. So don't be afraid. If you need to cancel, it's more important that you let them know right away so that they can take action and do a good job of finding a replacement for you.

Speaker 2: 7:02

So, jerry, I had a question for you as a new official. We talked about this last week. Kirk and I had mentioned it. You know I may be nervous to get on the field and I worked with a new official last year that you know knew the rules, knew the mechanics, but was almost paralyzed by the fear of making a mistake. You know, what can you say about? You know performance monitoring and how do you kind of balance that with hey, I'm a new official learning. If I have a bad game or a you know, my first or second game, it's not so great. What do you do or does that impact? You know future assignments.

Speaker 1: 7:30

Well, now getting into the performance. This is kind of the my favorite part about it, because a lot of people that become sports officials, one of the big reasons they do it is because they've been around the game or they love the game or they want to get exercise. So one of the great things I love about sports officiating is that I get to stay around the game and I get that same feeling when I'm out on the field. And what I mean by that is sometimes, as a sports official, you're going to make mistakes. You're going to make mistakes every game. You're going to have lots of calls and lots of things to do, but, like any good worker, you're really concerned about the things that you don't do well, and that fear of failure is a lot of times what we as officials focus on.

Speaker 1: 8:13

In fact, I had a double header last week in a baseball and it was an 18 year old double header game and these were top level kids all going to college and it was two organizations playing against each other and it was really laid back kind of situation and the coach had told us that. So hey, it's not a big deal, we're just trying to get some work in. Everybody's getting their reps. And I went out and worked the bases for two games and I was working with different play dump hires and I had a great time. Great couple of games. And then the very on the very last inning, in the last two plays of the game I missed two calls and it wasn't a big deal, but the coach told me on the last one he goes. Boy, you guys really struggled in that last inning and I said, yes, but thank you for having us come out and we appreciate it. And so I went home and really I've all I've been thinking about is the play that I missed and not all the ones that I got right.

Speaker 2: 9:08

Jerry, I just wanted to recap real quick what I just heard you say, and that is, yes, performance is an important to an assigner on the field, but equally important is the ability for a new official, or in fact any official, to be able to get on to the next play, in the next call, in the next game, and not sort of keep that baggage in their head. Right, jerry? Every year you publish something at the beginning of every football season and throughout the season actually, that says be good at the little things. What do you mean by the little things?

Speaker 1: 9:38

Bad experiences can be avoided when officials do the little things, and I wanted to go over a few of these and maybe I can pause between and you guys can offer some comments. But the first, probably the first and most important thing you can do as a sports official is to confirm your assignment. You want to confirm your assignment with whoever the host organization is. So if I've got a football game at Cherry Creek High School, I want to make sure that I call the provided contacts there and confirm that assignment. Maybe that's an email, maybe it's a text message, maybe it's a phone call, but you want to get that communication with the home school so you can confirm your game details and build rapport with that administration.

Speaker 2: 10:21

So I do have a question around that, jerry. Just from a mechanics perspective, is every official calling the school to confirm that game, or is that up to the referee? Because we've encouraged new officials not to take the referee position, so whose responsibility is that? Is that everybody, or is that just the R?

Speaker 1: 10:37

I think that's a good question. I think the lower the level you go, the more you want to contact the school yourself. When you get to the varsity level, collegiate level, oftentimes the referee is the one responsible for communicating with the school and then he can disseminate that communication to his crew. But as a new official, when you're just starting out, make sure that you call the school. They appreciate those calls. That gives them peace of mind. So as you work your way up in football, the referee or head official becomes more responsible. And that leads us to the next point that you want to check in with your referee, check in with your partners. Make sure that you call your partners and confirm with them. This way you can confirm transportation, you can confirm your pregame responsibilities.

Speaker 1: 11:25

You know nobody wants to show up to a game and have to work with a shortened crew. You're supposed to have four officials at the game and you only end up with three. You're working a baseball game and you're supposed to have two umpires and you only end up with one. Well, as a sports official and you just starting out, you're in control of that, so you can communicate with your partners and you can say, hey, where are we gonna park? What are we gonna do for pregame? How much time before the game should I get there? Should I arrive? 30 minutes, 45 minutes, and you wanna do that, so you have a good experience. And those are doing the little things.

Speaker 2: 12:00

So what I'm hearing, jerry, is that even if I'm not the R, so I'm a new official. Right, I'm working maybe the line judge spot in a four man game. If I haven't heard from the referee, I should maybe be reaching out to him as a new official and not necessarily waiting for him to call me. So if I get to two days, within game time or something, if I haven't heard anything, I should be contacting the rest of the crew and asking all the questions you just brought up when are we meeting? What time are we gonna be there? We're wearing short pants, long pants, et cetera, exactly.

Speaker 2: 12:28

And so, jerry, we've talked about lower level game assignments and self-assign. These are games that here in Colorado we can go and pick those sub-varsity assignments. Let's talk just a little bit about how do I get to that premier 5A game and Colorado, our highest level here is 5A. I know in some other states they have 6A and 7A, but man, I really wanna work that marquee televised game as an assigner. How do you make those decisions on who to give those games to and how to get those games? We talked a little bit last week about maybe having a misconception that right when I get out of school or get out of classes for new officials. I'm ready to go right. So am I ready to take the field for that 5A game? And if not, how do you kinda make that decision?

Speaker 1: 13:13

Good question. So I think first and foremost is experience. The more experience you have, the more likely the assigner is to pick you for higher level events or to pick that crew of officials for higher level events. It's hard to get the experience, but that's where you start out as a lower level official. So new officials don't really step in and do the premier varsity level events. They may work during the season and if they perform well they may get up to the varsity level.

Speaker 1: 13:40

But as you grow and get more experience, that's the first thing. The second thing beyond that is to improve your performance with increased rules knowledge, and there's a lot of opportunities that officials can take to improve their rules knowledge. The first thing many of them are doing is they're joining an association like ours, the Denver Football Officials Association, and that association offers training, film study, testing, rules study, sessions on field mechanics classes. In addition to that, there's also camps and clinics that you can go to throughout the summer that are organized by colleges and different officials groups, and so to get that experience and advance your rules knowledge, those are the things you need to do.

Speaker 2: 14:26

Jerry Kirk talked a little bit about this last week and that is advancing and moving up and getting a bigger games is not just about everything that happens on the field, but it's also about being a good crewmate. Can you talk a little bit about what that good crewmate concept means?

Speaker 1: 14:40

we're going to look at how you work with others, so your ability to work well with others is another great way that you can advance quickly the size of an assigner. We're going to be a lot more apt to put you on an assignment if we know that you're easy to work with. You have a good attitude, you're positive, you don't let the mistakes bother you. You come back quickly. You're responsible about your assignments. You do the little things. You show up on time. You're responsible about canceling.

Speaker 2: 15:11

Jerry, when Kirk and I wanted to do this podcast, we want to talk about all the good things in officiating and there's a lot of them, right, I wouldn't trade this experience for the world but also talk about maybe some of the more controversial or, I guess, maybe the darker side. However you want to look at it, when it comes to game assignments, there can be this thought process out there that it's a good old boys network, that it's hard to get those higher level games, that only the same guys seem to get those high level games. Can you talk a little bit about that from an assiners perspective?

Speaker 1: 15:41

You know, officials always say that it's a popularity contest and it's hard to get those assignments and get up there because you have to be in the good old boy system. And and Tom Robinson said you know the I think it may be a popularity contest. And when he, when I said, what do you mean, tom? We said, well, if it's a popularity contest, usually that means that the most popular officials well, why are they the most popular officials? Well, usually they're the ones that know the rules the best, they're the ones that are easy to work with, they're the ones that are the most professional, that have the most experience, the most skilled, and so in some ways it is a popularity contest. So I just wanted to mention that as well.

Speaker 3: 16:23

Yeah, jerry, we talked about that last week a little bit. That it's more than just the rules, knowledge and the mechanics on the field and how you look. You really got to be a teammate on that field. When it's five guys against a unruly crowd, I think those are all great comments about what it takes to be a good official. You want to be a good teammate.

Speaker 3: 16:44

And communication as you talk through over communicate as a new official, you can never communicate too much. I want to dive into a little bit more on the performance side. You know, as a new official, you're going to be told you're horrible and I'm going to talk to the school. You'll never work for us again and you know, fill in the blanks as a coach might get frustrated. How do you handle the? You're sometimes the middleman between the schools and the official.

Speaker 3: 17:14

Talk about owning a call and I want to add to this whole thing that nowadays it's there's so much video of your ruling and we talk about you got to own the call and if you manufacture something and all of a sudden the video shows something completely opposite, I think that puts a really bad mark on you and it's really hard to recover. So we talked a little bit last week about owning those calls and if you get it wrong, you get it wrong on it and I guess I want to talk through you as an assigner how do you view that and how do you utilize that information? You talked about the good old boy system, or at least the communication within a crew, and those that have been there and rely on an individual. Fill in the blanks there for a new guy that might hear that he's the worst official I've ever seen.

Speaker 1: 18:00

Well, you talked last week about in the last episode about being coachable, and I think, as a new young official, you want to be coachable and and the people that you work with, as you get more experience, you're going to find guys that you really like, that you look up to, and that's where you can get a mentor, somebody that you can lean on, somebody that you can talk about. The bad experiences that you had are the good experiences. So, as an official, after the game, find somebody that you can talk to about what happened after the game, and a lot of times this is where your post game work comes in. So, when the game is over, what can you do to improve your performance movie? Well, you can talk with your partners about what happened during the game. It's a great time to talk about the good things that happened and also to talk about the big plays. What happened on that interference call? What did you see? Did you have a cutoff? Did you have a push? What was it that you saw? Let's talk about that. And so those are things that you can do to help you feel better about the situations when you may have missed a call.

Speaker 1: 19:11

The worst thing you can do is just deny it and think that you've got every call right and it won't take you long out there on the football field or the baseball diamond or wherever you're at, to find out that you're not going to get every call right. You almost got to be like a goldfish, like in the Ted Lasso show. You got to have a short memory. Oftentimes as an official, you're out there as a new guy and something big call happens and man, it gets to you Just like if you were an athlete and you had a play and you made a mistake. You've got to learn how to bounce back from that and in sports officiating, that's what's real similar about athletics so your ability to come back and get up off the ground and make the next play. Well, in sports officiating you got to put it behind you. You got to make the next call and focus and readjust yourself and start over again. So the part about being coachable that you talked about last week was huge, and so that's a big part too.

Speaker 2: 20:09

It's amazing how quickly 30 minutes goes and we're almost coming up on that time. Two quick topics I wanted to make sure we address in this episode, and actually it's one of the questions for Kirk. So Jerry mentioned going to camps and clinics and Kirk, there's sort of two philosophies out there with camps and clinics. Right, we're getting ready to set up the CFOA camp here in July and it depends upon what level you're at. But some people are of the mindset that camps are not for learning, they're for being seen. Right, therefore, I want to get out there, I want to get my name out there. I'm not going to learn anything there, I want to get in front of an assigner to get that big game. Can you talk just a little bit about sort of your philosophy around camps and clinics and are they really an area to improve or are they just used as again quote unquote one of those political tools to get your name out there?

Speaker 3: 20:56

Yeah, I think that's a great question and guys have limited ability to get out. Sometimes it costs money to travel to a clinic somewhere and I think there's a myriad of answers to that. Joel, the one that and I've been putting on clinics in Colorado for years, the thing that I take away and I run them and.

Speaker 3: 21:15

I learn from them. You get your face in front of some guys. You hear some different things. We're sharing stuff across the state of Colorado that I feel like folks take back to their area. It's just a big sharing opportunity and also I think the coaches start recognizing officials that take it to that level. You can get involved in some of the higher college ranks by attending these, and even national. They'll be looking for guys to move up and fill spots with as officials retire and move out of the game. So it's all you know what you can get out of it. Reach out to whoever's putting on that clinic and find out what they're providing. Maybe it fits, maybe it doesn't.

Speaker 2: 21:56

And then around camps and clinics. I know that our area directors, so our leadership staff, they get emails or attendance lists of those officials that do go to camps and clinics and, jerry, I'm sure that filters to you right so you know who's trying to better themselves on the field.

Speaker 1: 22:11

Yes, we do, and that's something we look to as we move up and form crews is what camps and clinics did you attend? And it's not a bad thing at any time attending those. So it just adds to your experience and, like Kirk was saying, so, jerry, again we're almost the time kind of.

Speaker 2: 22:30

The last question I wanted to wrap up with. In last week we talked about expectations as a new official. When I joined DFOA 12 years ago the expectation was you didn't get a varsity game until a minimum of your third year. Now, because of shortages, we've seen, you know, late in the season some first year officials maybe end up in a lower level of our city game. You know what's a reasonable level expectation today to think. You know I've worked my sub varsity games the first half of the season. When am I going to see that first varsity game? Is it potentially in my first year now or is it that third year kind of wears the mindset at?

Speaker 1: 23:08

I think that in the past years ago it used to be that you'd have to work years before you got up to the varsity level but due to supply and demand, that hasn't been the case.

Speaker 1: 23:19

I think, as we're coming out of the pandemic now we're seeing an increase in the number of sports officials and, secondly, there has been a big increase in the fees that sports officials get in the state of Colorado and I think, to get to do a varsity football game now the pay is $85 plus a $10 travel stipend, so the pay is increased and that's going to increase the supply. Only the officials that are really stand out that maybe they have a lot of youth experience and they've been working youth football for 10 years and now they come into the high school ranks. Those guys are more likely to get a varsity game before others. It used to be we were putting guys in the varsity games right away after about half of the season and now I think the expectation should be that out of this class and I think there's 60 new officials coming into this class, maybe 50 or 45 of them make it through the class and start officiating that there might be one or two or three of those guys that make it and break into a varsity event.

Speaker 2: 24:18

Well, guys, again, I very much appreciate you taking the time out to do this second episode. Jerry, it was a pleasure having you on. Thank you for your time and your insights as an assigner and how some of these new officials can get games, kirk. Any closing words for us this week.

Speaker 3: 24:33

Nope, looking forward to the next one. Good job, Joel. Thank you, Jerry.

Speaker 1: 24:37

Thanks, Joel and Kirk. See you on the field.

Speaker 2: 24:39

Thanks to all our listeners that tuned in this week and spending part of your day with us, and thank you again to our special guest, jerry Letoski from Aurora Sports. Officials here in the Denver Colorado area, tune in to us next week when we're going to have Scott Lewis as our special guest. Scott Lewis is a multi-time state championship official and the rules interpreter for the Denver Football Officials Association, so we're going to chat with Scott about the most important aspects of mechanics and philosophies and rules that new officials need to know. Thanks again, thanks, scott.