Referees fine-tune their skills at camp

Spencer Patterson

Tuesday, July 18, 2000 | 9:39 a.m.

NBA dreams are in the air at this week's adidas Big Time Tournament, and it turns out those visions of basketball greatness are not restricted to the hordes of prep players in town for the 312-team event.

For the past three days, Valley High School has been host to the Coast to Coast Referee School, a traveling camp for aspiring basketball officials featuring instruction from NBA referees.

Forty hopefuls spent Saturday, Sunday and Monday receiving instruction and working two games a day. Those contests were filmed and played back to them with commentary from one of the eight NBA officials in town for the camp.

"We teach fundamentals, pretty much the A to Z of pro officiating," said camp co-director Michael Rush, whose father Ed -- director of officials for the NBA and WNBA -- founded Coast to Coast 10 years ago. "We take them for four days and break down their game and hopefully, make them better for the coming season."

The camp, which costs $450, draws referees with varying degrees of officiating experience, from high school to college to refs already in the NBA's training program who are looking for further instruction.

John Portland, a student at Penn State, officiates adult league and high school games in State College, Pa. He attended last week's Coast to Coast camp in Dallas, then flew to Las Vegas for more work with the NBA veterans.

"You get better by reffing a lot and watching your tapes to learn from your mistakes," Portland said. "They usually give you three things to work on for your next game. It's strong teaching, and it's helped me tremendously."

This week marked Coast to Coast's first involvement with the Big Time, but Rush said it likely won't be the last.

"We're very pleased with what went on here," Rush said. "I don't see any reason why we wouldn't come back."

The other seven Big Time sites feature high school and college referees from San Diego, Denver, Albuquerque, N.M., San Francisco, Salt Lake City and Louisville, Ky., along with local officials.

The Gaels got 27 points from C.J. Watson and 19 from Brandon Knott in a 72-59 win over the LA Rockfish Dolphins (Calif.) Monday morning, then held off Eastern Ohio Camp 54-44 in the afternoon behind Watson's 23 points.

Tim Day poured in 30 points to lead the Warriors to a 92-85 win over Connecticut Gold in the morning. Later in the day, Brandon Weaver and Wendell West tallied 16 points apiece to help the Warriors to a 79-62 victory against Middlesex Magic (Mass.).

Gorman opened today's action with a 9 a.m. contest against the Hawaii Raiders at Silverado High, while Western took the court for an 11:40 a.m. clash with the Rams of Oklahoma II. Should both teams pick up two wins today, the Gaels and Warriors would meet on Wednesday.