I've been refereeing for a couple of months now, I've just completed my fifth game today (all youth) so I will hopefully be promoted to Level 7 next week.
My county is one of the few that assign mentors and mandate that a mentor observes a game you officiate before you can be promoted. I met my mentor for my third game last weekend, and after discussing his feedback with me he effectively "popped the question" and asked when I'd be considering officiating adult games.
My intention was always to get to adult games, and to do so quickly, but my confidence level before and after picking up a whistle for the first time was completely different and it soon became apparent that I'd want to iron out mistakes and get more used to the routine of refereeing a game before trying my luck with adults.
My mentor's advice was to effectively take the plunge, and accept that my first games will likely be very difficult (he told me that he cried after his first adult game, which wasn't exactly comforting, but not surprising either). In his opinion, the sooner I got over that rough patch at the start the better and I could start progressing properly.
I mostly wanted to see how things went with you guys. For those that first started refereeing as adults, when did you do your first adult game? How stark was the difference from older youth fixtures?
I'm very tempted to just go for it but I'm also very worried about it as I feel like I'm still not totally confident with youth games, and I don't want to go too hard too fast and risk blowing my confidence/motivation to continue entirely.
My county is one of the few that assign mentors and mandate that a mentor observes a game you officiate before you can be promoted. I met my mentor for my third game last weekend, and after discussing his feedback with me he effectively "popped the question" and asked when I'd be considering officiating adult games.
My intention was always to get to adult games, and to do so quickly, but my confidence level before and after picking up a whistle for the first time was completely different and it soon became apparent that I'd want to iron out mistakes and get more used to the routine of refereeing a game before trying my luck with adults.
My mentor's advice was to effectively take the plunge, and accept that my first games will likely be very difficult (he told me that he cried after his first adult game, which wasn't exactly comforting, but not surprising either). In his opinion, the sooner I got over that rough patch at the start the better and I could start progressing properly.
I mostly wanted to see how things went with you guys. For those that first started refereeing as adults, when did you do your first adult game? How stark was the difference from older youth fixtures?
I'm very tempted to just go for it but I'm also very worried about it as I feel like I'm still not totally confident with youth games, and I don't want to go too hard too fast and risk blowing my confidence/motivation to continue entirely.