Referee Expectations

The Bump Set Drink Volleyball league strives to provide referees that are knowledable, impartial and conscientious.  The experience pool for Bump Set Drink Volleyball referees ranges from referees that maintain professional certifications to dedicated league members who have received informal training within the league.  All Bump Set Drink Volleyball referees are expected to follow these expecatations.

Expectation 1:  Remain professional and objective at all times.  Do not let players antagonize you and do not retaliate for any such attempts.  Remain calm at all times and use the following choices of penalties as necessary and appropriate to control players: verbal warnings, yellow cards (awards point to opposing team), player ejections (red card), and player disqualifications (yellow & red card).  All yellow and red cards should be reported to the League Officials at the end of the match.  League Officials will meet to determine more severe sanctions, if necessary.

Expectation 2.  Referees are expected to learn the current USAV rules located on the www.chrva.org website.  It is impossible for one referee to see everything but you should concentrate on the following:

• Before start of play:  Arrive 10 minutes prior to the match, bring the captains together, perfrom the coin toss (winning captain picks choice of serve or side).  Perform a second coin toss for 3^rd game and have the winning captain choose serve or side.  Give 6 minutes warm up time.  Start game.
  
  
• Player Behavior: The captains should be warned during the coin toss that improper behavior will not be tolerated.  This will be their only warning.  The offending individual will first have his team penalized a point, then thrown out of the game and then thrown out of the match.  League Officials will review all player behavior infractions and may impose further sanctions, including suspension from the league (usually based on multiple infractions or a particularly severe infraction).  There will be no special circumstances for anyone.  If a team does not have enough players to continue after a disqualification, they will forfeit.  No exceptions should be given due to the effect of the ejection.
  
  
• Forfeits: For the first match of the evening, a grace period of 10 minutes after the scheduled start time of the match will be allowed before the first game will be forfeited.  Each subsequent game will be forfeited every 5 minutes.  Play will start as soon as each team has at least 5 players. The score of each forfeited game will be recorded as 25-0.  If a team forfeits, the games may still be played. The score, however, will still be recorded as stated above. The referees may choose not to officiate a forfeited game.  It is the league officials view that a forfeit should be avoided as much as reasonably possible.  If anyone is available to substitute, all attempts should be made to play the match as scheduled.
  
  
• Start of play:
• Look for server foot faults.
• Check player locations on each team (on the court and in rotation).
• If a player was off the court but it is close, give 1 warning after the play has ended.
• If two players are a couple of inches out of rotation, give 1 warning after the play has ended.  The interpretation of the rule is that the out-of-rotation gives the team a clear advantage.  If they just were not paying attention and it is close, let it go with a warning after the play has ended.
  
  
• During play:
  
• Administer time outs, 2 per team per game.
• Look for improper/illegal contacts: 4 team hits, multiple hits, held ball
• Unless otherwise stated, all USAV rules should be followed for calling illegal contacts.  Since calling hand sets can be challenging and contentious, we will clarify the two forms of illegal contact:
• Multiple Hits – these are allowed on a team’s 1^st contact if unintentional (at your discretion).  Multiple hits are never allowed on a team’s 2^nd or 3^rd contact.  These should be called uniformly across all leagues.
• Held Balls – the ball is contacted for too long of a time (also called “carry” or “lift” by many people).  This applies to all contacts: passes, hand sets, hits, power dinks, etc.  Before the match begins, you should choose how long you will allow for length of contact and enforce that consistently for every contact throughout the match.  BumpSetDrink typically allows longer contacts in the lower leagues and shorter contacts in the higher leagues, to allow the lower league players more opportunity to develop their skills.  One way to be consistent about your held ball calls is to repeat a specific word in your head with each contact and, if you believe any contact goes longer than the word, whistle and signal a held ball.  You can choose shorter, quicker words for higher leagues and longer, slower words for lower leagues.
  
• Finally, some general points about calling illegal contacts:
• Above all, be consistent.  Strive to enforce the same standards on both teams throughout the match.
• Only call illegal contacts on what you observe, not on what sounds you might have heard or on what players suggest that you should have called.
• The best way to make illegal contact calls is to anticipate who will next play the ball and zoom your focus in on that person, watching the contact as closely as you can.
• A ball spinning as it comes out of a hand set is not necessarily an illegal contact (multiple hit or held ball).  It might be a sign that you need to watch the contact more closely.
• Realize that you won’t always have the best angle to see all contacts, which means sometimes you will miss calling an illegal contact.  If you experienced players being especially vocal in criticizing missed calls, you can let the team captains know that you will start giving verbal warnings to those players to improve their conduct.
• Referees should not lower their standards because a particular player is struggling to play within the rules.  It is the team captain’s responsibility to make adjustments for any player not performing well.  If the team captain did not value setters who can set cleanly during the draft, it is not the referee’s responsibility to cover up that error.
  
  
• End of Games:  At end of the first game have the teams switch sides, and have the teams write down the scores.  At the end of the second game, do another coin flip (if you have not already done so) to choose sides and serve for the third game.  At the end of the third game, if you are not scheduled to ref but the next ref is not yet there, do the pre-match stuff (call the next match’s captains over for the coin toss, etc) so that the next match’s warmup proceeds right away.
  
  
• Play Format: Rally scoring will be in effect for all games.  There will be a 6 minute warm-up period before the start of each match.  Please prepare as much as possible before the previous match ends.  In general, games will be 25 points with a 27 point cap.  Note, the 1st game of the 7pm match should start at 7pm, therefore warm-ups should take place before 7pm.  If, however, time becomes short, the games will be abbreviated to 19 points with a 21 point cap.  The start of the match is defined as the end of the previous match or 7pm, if it is the 1st match of the night.  Time is defined as becoming short if the 1st game ends later than 25 minutes past the start of the match (20 minutes for the 7pm match).  If the cumulative time at the end of the 2nd game is longer than 40 minutes from the start of the match, than the 3rd game will also be shortened.  Even though USAV rules state 3 minutes between games, it behooves the teams to shorten that time as much as possible to allow for full games.  Due to the league's contractual obligations with the Discovery Center, there is no discretion on the referee's part to change these parameters.