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SC Official, I understand your position that it does not matter to the schools what we think is best. My statements on where we need 3-person crews and where we should have 3-person crews are more from a training and development standpoint, and what I would consider good practices for an association varsity development program to have. Perhaps this would be a good starting point for officials associations to negotiate with state association (if varsity assignments are handled through the state), schools/school systems (if individual schools sign contracts with associations), or conferences (for states using that system) on arrangements that would be in the best interests of all involved, including the officials themselves. There are many articles on the shortage of officials and the need for new officials.
However, there are other forms of attrition that no one is paying attention to, and that may be eating away at even the varsity level soon. Older officials will retire. Good high school officials will get picked up at the college level, and if they move up to the Division I level or get hired to work professional basketball, say goodbye to using them for high school assignments. They may be able to stay on as association commissioners (Tony Brothers is the commissioner of Peninsula Basketball Officials Association (IAABO Board 125) in Virginia) or as trainers, but they need to be replaced with quality trained officials at the varsity level. These replacements will be taken from the subvarsity level, so there need to be training programs that associations use for both non-scholastic and scholastic basketball to meet their needs. For instance, if a JV official isn't getting enough 3-person experience from a subvarsity schedule, give him a men's league or travel schedule to get him 3-person experience, preferably with other varsity/college officials who are not assigned that day, so he can learn from better officials as he prepares to make the jump to varsity.
JRutledge, I totally agree with you on being an independent contractor, accepting games from different sources, and schools acting as if officials must follow their lead. I am no longer exclusively a member of Board 12 (and have not been for the past year), but I have been joining other boards, and will have some men's league games, if not varsity games, specifically to work on my 3-person game, get to know college officials, and work with them (Matt Myers uses high school and college officials to work the men's leagues that he assigns).
Would the terms "have better athletic ability" or "too athletic" work better?
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