To become a better basketball official, Kelly Pfeiffer began exploring outside the box, consulting a neuropsychologist about ways to improve her job.
Dr. Josephine Combs is the medical director of concussion services at Sanford Health, where she evaluates and treats head injuries in athletes and non-athletes, and also provides sports psychology services for all ages and skill levels.
She is a valued member of the Sanford Health team that helps athletes, coaches and non-athletes at all levels develop and maintain a strong mind.
Dr. Combs’ research can help you improve self-confidence, develop leadership skills, manage stress, and more.
Join the game: Individual and Team Fitness with Sanford Sports
The work with Pfeiffer, a top-level official who officiates major college men’s basketball games that are nationally televised across the U.S., began when Pfeiffer searched the Internet for “sports mental training.” Dr. Combs’ name came up and the official immediately called on him.
First teamwork
Their conversation marked new territory for both men, and they later said the collaboration made them better at what they do.
“I’d never done anything like this, and she’d never worked with an umpire,” said Pfeiffer, who lives in Mitchell, South Dakota, and grew up in Phillips. “I’d always heard about athletes doing mental training to improve their focus, and I thought maybe that same kind of training could help me.”
Pfeiffer had a lot of questions: What does this all mean? What are we going to discuss? What can I do to make me a better referee?
Dr. Combs also asked: What does it take to be a good umpire? What do you find most challenging about being an umpire? How do you manage the obvious stresses of being an umpire?
While Dr Combs doesn’t blow the whistle on the job and Pfeiffer doesn’t stop games to meet with coaches, both umpires and sports psychologists deal with the intensity of the game and how it affects people.
“From an athlete’s perspective, they want to work on focus, goal setting and concentration. They want to stay in the moment but not get too excited,” Dr. Combs said. “That applies a lot to umpires as well. They have to get really good at maintaining their attention. They’re multitasking. They have to see pretty much everything and pay attention to everything.”
Even if all of the referees’ calls were technically correct, and even if their calls were not subject to intense public scrutiny, the job of officiating a basketball game would not be easy.
“Manage the moments that matter”
So when Pfeiffer says he wants to be a better umpire, he understands that perfection is more of a dream than an achievable goal. That said, there are lines that any umpire doesn’t want to cross. Anything you can do to avoid crossing those lines is a constructive step forward.
“When you’re calling a high-profile nationally televised basketball game, you don’t want your play-by-play to be the lead story on SportsCenter that night,” Pfeiffer said. “You have to manage the key moments. You have to stay calm and keep everyone else calm during times of chaos.”
Dr. Combs worked hard to keep Pfeiffer out of the spotlight on ESPN, and not surprisingly, the process involved many of the same conversations and mental training she gives to athletes.
During one of their first sessions, Dr. Combs had Pfeiffer practice mindfulness techniques and asked her to identify five things in her office, which Pfeiffer quickly answered.
“She told me my brain works fast,” Pfeiffer recalled, “and she said, ‘Well, you have to when you’re refereeing,’ and she told me that sometimes you have to slow your brain down.”
Practicing mindfulness during the match
Slowing down Pfeiffer’s work means breaking up a 40-minute basketball game into more manageable chunks. In college basketball, media timeouts are built into the game, in addition to the timeouts that teams call themselves. Those breaks give officials a chance to refresh their brains.
“During a media timeout, I might ask myself what I’m looking at,” Pfeiffer said. “My answer will be pretty basic: I look at the scoreboard and I’m like, ‘OK, the score is 19-18, one team has two fouls and the other team has one foul.’
At the next break, the question will be asked, “How does it feel?” and Pfeiffer will likely provide the answer.
“My answer might be, ‘OK, this game is going well,'” Pfeiffer said. “‘I’m calm. I’m not tired.’ And then it might be, ‘What do I hear?’ And that’s the crowd and the band. And then it might be, ‘What do I smell?’ And then, ‘What do I taste?'”
It’s a routine Pfeiffer started after working with Dr. Combs, with the goal of making herself as mentally prepared as possible for whatever comes next on the basketball court.
“Basketball refereeing requires you to stay focused for 40 minutes, not 25,” Pfeiffer said. “So you end up telling yourself, ‘I’m going to stay focused for the next five or six minutes,’ and then the next time there’s 3:23 left in the half, you tell yourself, ‘I’ve got to play well for the next 3:23.’ And then halftime comes and you have a chance to reset everything.”
Photo by Jay Pickthorn, Sanford Health
Confidence when making phone calls
This can be seen as a kind of preventative medicine: being in good mental health doesn’t guarantee that no one will ever question his decisions, but it can put you in a better state so that you’re less likely to make decisions you’ll regret.
“Typically it’s very motivated, very talented people who seek these things, whether they’re athletes or not,” Dr. Combs said. “Our work together has allowed him to take advantage of his incredible talent as an umpire and use it more consistently. It’s a kind of fine-tuning. He’s doing all the work. I’m just giving him some extra tools to help him do it even better.”
Communication may be an umpire’s most valuable tool, especially when emotions are running high. The ability to communicate clearly and consistently with coaches, players and other umpires is essential to effectively managing a match.
“It’s not just what umpires say, it’s how they say it,” Combs says. “So much of their communication is non-verbal. How do I express myself? How do I show coaches that I’m confident in my communication skills? How do I let people know that I know what I’m doing and they can’t take my decisions the wrong way?”
Pfeiffer’s career as an umpire began when his former Dakota Wesleyan University basketball coach, the late Doug Martin, encouraged him to stay in the game as a coach or umpire.
Pfeiffer started officiating summer camps for high school players and worked his way up the ranks with specific goals in mind. He quickly impressed industry bosses and kept getting hired.
“At some point it just snowballed,” Pfeiffer said. “It’s been a great experience and I want to continue doing it.”
Mental health is health
Pfeiffer’s wife, Ashley, and their three children can catch his show on TV some nights — two or three times a week isn’t such a big deal now, but sometimes when they ask him about a show they watched, he takes great pains to explain what it was about.
Related: Sanford Defense Department joins campaign to stop referee abuse
It’s a reminder that officials are human beings with lives off the court, too, and when sports psychologists like Dr. Combs help basketball officials do their jobs better, they’re trying to help them in all areas, not just charging calls.
“If we all treated our mental health the same way we go to the dentist for a check-up every six months, we could catch a lot of things before they become a problem,” says Dr. Combs. “If we treated them before they got to that point, we could avoid having to get a root canal. Visits like Kelly’s can be very beneficial — in fact, they can be fun. You don’t have to be in a crisis to go — just have fun and get something out of it.”
A generation ago, Pfeiffer would have hesitated to tell his peers that he was having conversations with a sports psychologist. Thankfully, those days are gone. In fact, he now welcomes those conversations.
“Dr. Combs is a really great person, very understanding and it was clear from our conversation that she has studied umpiring extensively,” Pfeiffer said. “I’m really grateful to have had the opportunity to work with her and have her help me prepare for every game.”
learn more
…
Published in Basketball, Behavioral Health, Brain and Spine, Sanford Sports, and Sports Medicine
