RE: Love Sports? Be an Official
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I often thought about it, but honestly I don't think my brain processes stuff fast enough to be a ref. Like I don't see things until a second after they happened, or at least that's the way it seems sometimes.
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Nah, the hardest part of reffing is just getting your hand movements to match your whistle. If you decide you want to do it, just buy the whistle and stand in front of a mirror for 10 minutes practicing blowing the whistle while raising your hand or whatever. In basketball, having a "patient" whistle is a lot of times better anyway. The biggest key to reffing is just looking the part. If you know the game, the judgement part will come quickly. It's just making sure your signals and appearance are confident. That is literally half the battle. You work lower level games for a year or two where the expectations are pretty minimal (although the parents can be rough--they all think their kid is the next Michael Jordan). Once you have your mechanics down, its not hard to move up to better games. Plus, like I said, they're desperate for officials right now. In any sport. Lacrosse, hockey, baseball, you name it. There's plenty of work out there....
Plus, it's rewarding and something you can literally do for the rest of your life. I work with quite a few guys in their late 60s and there's even a few here and there in their 80s. Not kidding. They need bodies.