[BillyMac]

Just got an email with some sobering figures from our local board's secretary/treasurer.

Before last season, we had 300 working members (servicing about 70 high schools and many middle schools). Over the past fifteen years we've been somewhere between 300 and 325 members.

Due to safety concerns about COVID, 40% of those 300 members chose not to be assigned games last season.

And now we've had many retirements. We now have only 255 working officials for next season, lowest number I can remember since before we merged with a small, non-IAABO "girls" association about fifteen years ago, including about a half-dozen newly trained members from our most recent very small COVID cadet class. We normally train about two dozen new members each year.

Many of those who retired were outstanding, highly experienced (25-plus, 30-plus, 35-plus, 40-plus years), veteran officials, some of whom were probably already close to thinking about retiring from officiating. After talking to some of them at our recent end-of-year banquet (postponed a few months due to COVID) it appears that the time off this past season helped them to decide and just pushed them over the edge of the retirement cliff.

The NFHS, and other such organizations, blames poor fan behavior for the lack of officials in many sports.

Is something like this (COVID, advancing age, poor fan behavior) going on anywhere else?