Recommended Reading: Better

What profession demands perfection every time? In what profession are they not only finding ways to do what they do better, but finding better ways to do what they do? Where is one mistake a potentially huge deal?

Well, turns out I'm very intentionally being vague enough to describe both surgery and refereeing.

Atul Gawande's book Better: A Surgeon's Notes on Performance was a great read, full of conversations about how one deals with stress, how one deals with failure, and how one pushes oneself to be better when others won't. He's talking about as a surgeon, I think there's a lot to learn about refereeing or, as is probably his point, about life in general. But focus on being a better ref, I don't care if you're a better person.

Recommended Reading: Successful Sports Officiating

Start this next year of refereeing off right, read this book as soon as possible. It's been possibly the most important book I've read as a referee. From the approach you bring to reffing, to your attitude, to your style, to how you call things in different situations this book covers it all. I imagine it would also be valuable as a skater.

It's surprising, at first, how a book written about refereeing so many sports that are so different from derby relate so directly to our experiences. But the fact is, this stuff has all been figured out before, by so many others before us, and it's folly to think we need to do it all ourselves, or to eschew this advice because it's how other sports do something. When every sport, ever, has come to the same conclusions about how to handle something, signs point to that, possibly, just maybe, being a reasonably good approach.

Do yourself a real favor, check out this book.

Recommended Reading: The Birth of a Uniform

Hey Everyone, sorry it's been a while, but I'm introducing a new feature to make up for it, Recommended Reading! Some will be short articles, some will be books. All will be relevant, not all will be directly about reffing. Most will be. I own books written by referees, so there's where I'm at.

Anyway, this time around I want to forward on an article Madison Referee Maxx Chaos pointed me to. You think Roller Derby is so punk rock, huh? Way cooler and more bad-ass than, say, football. Football is uptight, yeah? And roller derby is underground and irreverent! Football is for the squares and wheels are anything but square, right? Well answer me this, you rebel, when was the last time you planned to steal from a restaurant just so you could referee correctly?

The Write Referee discusses the history of putting together a referee's outfit and equipment in the days before the internet. It's a good little read. An easy start.