Tell Luka your sport and your state — he'll get you to your first game.
Officiating starts the same way everywhere in America: register with your state association, learn its rules cold, pass its exam, work your way up from a mentor's shadow to your own assignments. Luka walks that whole path with you — he teaches from the same authored banks the coaches study (you'll sit the same rules exams, because the whistle has to know them better), drills your endgame judgment with the Lab-graded decision exams, and sends you through your state's actual registration door below. Start with the conversation.
The honest line, up front: the exams in this room teach and test the rules. They are not any association's official certification exam — your state association runs its own exam and its own registration, and we prepare you for both. Nobody gets "certified" by a website worksheet, and we never print that word on a completion certificate.
Your front door — register in your state
There is no national sign-up desk for school officials, and anyone who sells you one is selling you a detour. The real path is: register with your state association, get trained and assigned locally. That's why this directory lists each state's own officials door instead of thousands of local assignor chapters we couldn't verify to our standard — your association hands you to your local crew. The national bodies (NFHS's officials services, NASO) sit alongside for training and insurance. Ask Luka "how do I become a high school ref in Texas?" in chat — he answers from this same directory.
The rules exams — the same banks, the whistle's standard
Officials study from the same authored banks as the coaches in the Coach's Corner — written for this clubhouse from published rule summaries, never copied from association exams. Study mode explains every answer with its rule citation; the scored exam draws 25 fresh questions and passes at 80%. Miss one and Luka teaches it from the bank's own explanation. In the room we hold officials to the plain standard: if you can't pass it here, you're not ready to pass it there.
Judgment school — the decision exams
Exams graded by the same model that powers the Lab. Officials don't make these calls — coaches do — but the best crews know what the numbers say about them, because game management is half the job. Work them like a coach; it'll make you a better official.
Football decisions
Basketball endgame
Your first game
The coach's paperwork — practice plans, lineup cards, the parent one-pager — lives in the Coach's Corner, forms included. Read them: knowing what the other bench is holding makes you better on yours.
The rules differences matrix
Crews move between levels all season — Friday's high school game is not Saturday's college game. The differences that actually change calls, in one table.
Officials worth studying
Sourced fact profiles with the teaching angle first: positioning, communication, consistency — what made each of them good at the job. Quotes print only where a licensed or free source carries them verbatim; otherwise none, because we don't reconstruct them. Faces will join through the clubhouse's Wikimedia Commons photo pipeline — the named follow-on, not built yet.