As a sports referee we try our best to get every call right. But we don’t! Missed calls are part of the game; just like bad plays by the athletes or wrong decisions by the coaches. The sooner we learn to accept this fact, the easier it will be to become the best referee that we can be.
Watch professional sport referees and umpires and you will see that even on the big stage, they miss calls; some at key points in a game. And these are the best of the best, making the real money. If they can miss a few, so can we.
There are many reasons calls are missed. Sometimes we may not have the best angle to see a play. Other times, something happens right in front of us, but we are focused on something else. Sometimes we are screened by other players and cannot see the complete play. Whatever the reason, good calls and bad calls are part of every game. We may as well get used to it.
Sometimes a missed call can be fixed. Some situations allow us to get help from our fellow officials in an attempt to get it right. If another official has a better view, don’t hesitate to ask for help. It may be awkward, but getting it right is a lot better than getting it wrong and insisting you are right.
Most of the time, however, bad calls are not fixable. We just have to get the ball back into play, take the heat and move on. As my mentor used to say, “some of our bad calls, we just have to eat.”
In the long run, if we prepare, hustle and make our best effort to get the calls right, most of the time we will succeed. But when we miss a call, we need to accept it, move on and vow to get the next ten calls right. After all, missed calls are just another part of the game.
