Reffing (338)

Have you ever been mad at a ref's call? Or even more mad if a player is reffing and they make a bad call or aren't paying attention? That is why we have to take a reffing course to be certified to ref. As a player for USA volleyball this is required so that we know what we are doing when we ref. It is necessary for us to learn this because at tournaments you get assigned to ref other matches in your pool. Sometimes they have an official to up ref (the main ref) and down ref (the other main ref) but you still have to do the other reffing jobs. 

There is a variety of things to do when reffing. First, you have to have an up ref who stands on the post above the net. They make all of the main calls. Then, there is a down ref who stands on the ground on the opposite side of the up ref and they watch for things that the up ref might not see like net, under the net, substitutions, score table, and out of rotation calls. Sitting at the table there is a scorekeeper who flips the score, a libero tracker who keeps track of who the libero goes in and out for, and a book keeper who has a score sheet that keeps track of rotations, substitutions, penalties, serving order, score, and all the information about the match. (I usually do this when I'm reffing.) The last thing that is needed is line judges. They stand on the corners of the court and say if the ball was in or out. They also watch for foot faults from the servers, which means the server stepped on the line. 

We need to learn how to do all of these things to be able to play club volleyball since it is required that teams ref during tournaments. It seems hard at first, but once you practice it and do it for a while it is easy.