Fischer, Jim E (Corvallis)

I sent this to the OBRA_officials e-mail list, but Candi suggested I send it out to everyone.

Here's what I need:

If you are an experienced official...
Let me now if you want to help with this training. If you know of other officials who may be interested in helping, please forward.

If you are interested in becoming an official...
Please e-mail me with your information if you are interested, regardless of whether or not you can attend the 1/13 training session in Corvallis.

Read below for more info on what the course will entail.

This is primarily for training the officials who drive behind the field during the race. If we have the interest and support, we could also do training for finish line Judges.

Regards, Jim Fischer
jim.fischer@hp.com
541.990.8979 (cell)

-----Original Message-----
From: Fischer, Jim E (Corvallis)
Sent: Wednesday, December 05, 2007 2:32 PM
To: 'obra_officials@list.obra.org'
Cc: 'T. Kenji Sugahara'
Subject: Official's Training - 1/13, Corvallis

Hey OBRA officials,

I'm trying to put together a training clinic for road officials for Sunday Jan 13th. Kenji expressed a concern that this may be a bit early, but I need officials trained up from our Team for the Cherry Pie, which is 2/17. I wanted to miss any conflicts with the Kermese races and the Jack Frost, hence the 1/13 date.

The plan...

9-10:30: Handout materials and discuss how to be a road official.
10:30 - Head out onto the practice course. We'll use local roads for the training. Permit is in the works.
11-1:30pm: We will work a race with fields riding and folks in the cars, then swap so everybody gets a chance to do this.
1:30 - Head back to the meeting room for discussion and wrap up.
3pm - Head home.

We will use Candi's slide set as a starting point, but the highlight will be the field work out on the road working a mock race situation.

I really need committments from existing OBRA officials to help teach. The field session will probably entail stuffing as many prospective students in each car as possible, then driving as officials normally would. I'm open to ideas about how to do this training, but you get the idea. Hands-on is the key to getting the info into people's brains.

If I can get 5 experienced officials to commit, we can open this up to all of OBRA.

Think about how it will help this season to have, say, 20 more trained road refs to help out!

If we get Judge-types to offer their support and instruction, we can do a mock finish line with the camera and all to really help fill out our Officials ranks with new blood.

Please let me know if you are willing to help out.

Thanks,

Jim Fischer
541.990.8979

PS: I realize this is short notice, but I think we can pull it off successfully and get lots of new folks somewhat familiarized with how these jobs work so they can help with all the early season events just around the corner.