My fellow officials,
The Virginia high school rules exam is open now and the Maryland exam opens a week from Wednesday (on the 12th). At our next membership meeting (March 3rd – 7pm via Zoom), we will have a class dedicated to preparation. In the meantime, here are a couple things to remember regarding these exams.
First, in order to be eligible to work in the playoffs in Virginia, you must score at least 80%. In Maryland, you must score at least 85%. If you don’t score at least a 90% on the exam, I strongly urge you to consider re-taking it. In Virginia, you may retake the exam once; in Maryland, you can take it a total of five times.
The exam is on-line. You do not have to take it in one sitting! Consider taking half the exam, taking a break, then coming back to it later. Please guard against reading the questions rapidly, then assuming you know the answer without carefully checking the wording in the questions. Read the question twice – make absolutely certain you understand what information is being requested.
Know some of the red flags. For example, “always and never” in a question usually means the answer is false (not always, though – see what I did there 😊).
The exam is intended to be open-book; I strongly urge you to wait until you have your rule book and case book available for reference. Generally (not always), exam questions come verbatim from the rule book or the case book. While there are not many significant rule changes this year, the exam almost always has questions about rule changes (this year’s changes AND last year’s changes) as well as points of emphasis.
I hope this helps! Good luck on the test! Our rules folks (Greg McAvoy and Vin Vena) are here to help. Please reach out to them if you have any issues. That’s all I got.
Until next time,
Dave Maher
President
[email protected]
703-909-4852