Author Archives: Gordon Corsetti

“Advancement Rules” – Now Available on the Amazon Kindle Store!

I am beyond excited to announce that my first book, “Advancement Rules: Improving Your Lacrosse Officiating” is now available for purchase on the Amazon Kindle Store! After a year of writing and a few months of editing and cover design I have a finished product that I am incredibly proud of. I could not have gotten to this point without the help of some fantastic people in my life: Continue reading

Why Did I Do That?

Officiating is not immune to the human condition. Even though everyone associated with the game expects the crew to be perfect it is never going to happen. To be fair, no player or coach has ever played or coached perfectly, but no one cares about those mistakes. Our mistakes get talked about at the office water cooler and lampooned by commentators if you are officiating in front of a national audience. We cannot eliminate all mistakes, but we can cut down on their frequency if we are honest with ourselves and each other about the on-field mistakes that we make. I cannot speak for other officials, but I can talk about the different mistakes I’ve made over my career. Hopefully, putting my mistakes out in the open will help other officials when they hit the field.

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Hustle

My high school coach had a saying: “I don’t care if you make a mistake. So long as you make it going a million miles an hour.” He could not get angry at us if we screwed up as long as we were hustling and running our hardest. This same principle applies to officiating at every level of the game. If coaches see you lazily walking to your position they will make several assumptions. One of the assumptions is that the official on the game does not care about the game. Once that thought is in the coach’s mind, the official will have a difficult time extricating that assumption. Continue reading

Vail LAREDO 3 Notes!

The following notes are geared towards officials in a three-man crew, but there are also many general officiating comments and mechanics observations that will serve any official well. The following list was put together by Don Balch and Sean Murphy:

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Vail LAREDO 3 Recap and Notes

I am roughly two weeks removed from the Vail LAREDO, and I want to go back! I got to work with great officials from all around the country, and was lucky to have Don Balch and Sean Murphy as the clinicians. Helping Don and Sean were crew chiefs Joe Cronin, Dale Hall, Hank Friedman, and Tim Markham. The crew chiefs did a fantastic job of managing the games, while simultaneously critiquing and advising my fellow campers and myself. Don and Sean put together the following comments after Day 1, which are observations and evaluations things that at least one official did during the games: Vail 2012 LAREDO – General Comments. Feel free to download this document to read at your leisure.

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Live Blogging The Vail LAREDO 3 (Part 4)

I am happy to report that last night I was selected to be part of the Division 1 Championship game. That game is firmly in the books where it belongs, and now I can look back at the entire experience.

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Live Blogging The Vail LAREDO 3 (Part 3)

Your traveling official was too tuckered out after yesterdays games to do a post last night. So this live blog is a recap of the games from yesterday and today. Continue reading

Live Blogging The Vail LAREDO 3 (Part 2)

It is bed time in Vail, Colorado, and I am waiting on the Alka-Seltzer PM to kick in. My schedule of games for tomorrow is pretty packed. Six games in a row back-to-back-to-back-to-back-to-back-to-back. That is a lot of games. I spoke with one of the crew chiefs about how tomorrow’s games usually go, and he said in no small words, “it sucks.” It’s a lot of games with a lot of running. All at 8,500 feet above sea level. Continue reading

Live Blogging The Vail LAREDO 3 (Part 1)

I am sitting in the Denver, Colorado airport hydrating with copious amounts of water in preparation for officiating four days of high-caliber lacrosse at the Vail Lacrosse Shootout for the LAREDO 3 event. For those unfamiliar with what a LAREDO is, it stands for: LAcrosse REferee DevelOpment. “Since the late 1980s, the LAREDO program has been providing training for lacrosse officials around the country” (www.uslacrosse.org). Continue reading