[Nevadaref]

Due to a point raised in another thread, I thought it would be interesting to learn how different places administer their athletics. Maybe we can get some good ideas from each other. For better or for worse, here is how it is done in Nevada.

The state is chopped up geographically into three regions for officiating purposes. (There are also three regionals for member schools, but they are not the same as the way the officials are grouped.) There is one association in each of those regions. They are called the Southern Nevada Officials Association (SNOA), the Northeastern Nevada Officials Association (NENOA), and the Northern Nevada Officials Association (NNOA). The SNOA serves Las Vegas and its surrounding area, the NENOA works the games in Elko and the other small towns in that corner of the state, and the NNOA handles the Reno/Sparks area, Lake Tahoe, and some other smaller towns around here.
Now these associations have a contract with the governing body for high school athletics in the state, the Nevada Interscholastic Activities Association, to provide officials for all games which take place in Nevada involving NIAA member schools. The NIAA has an Executive Director and a staff, who make the schedules (school A v. school B, not assigning the officials to the games), secure the venues for regional and state championship contests, and handle the administration of the athletes (eligibility and suspensions). There is also something called a board of control, which meets and decides things like whether or not we will have a mercy rule and which schools are in which divisions. The NIAA would be considered our state office. Continue reading below to see how the state office influences our testing and assigning.

Each association is made up of different chapters--one for each sport. Each chapter has its own president, etc, and has a way that its assigning is done.

However, the NIAA Executive Director appoints a commissioner who is charged with overseeing the coaches, players, and officials in each sport. The way I understand it, it is ultimately his decision on how officials are tested and assigned. For a while the SNOA has had only one commissioner for all sports, the NENOA has had two (one guy handled baseball and softball and another did the rest), and the NNOA has had six commissioners for eight different sports. Last year the main NNOA commissioner resigned and the NIAA Ex.D. decided to follow the SNOA lead and have one guy for all sports. So this year we have only one commissioner.
Now in the past the commissioner of each sport had the responsibility to select the officials for postseason play. Some commissioners did this themselves and assigned officials to particular games, some chose to delegate this task to the leaders of each chapter. (The new man seems to be following the delegation path. I personally think no commissioner should have anything to do with either the selection or assigning of postseason officials because most commissioners aren't even officials, they are former coaches or administrators. I would rather that it be left up to the individual chapters, and they can work out how it is done amongst themselves.)
Now the regular season is pretty straight forward since each Association is assigned what schools it covers based upon geographic location. Therefore, southern guys and northern guys never work together in the regular season.
The playoffs are a two-tiered system in this state. This consists of the regionals (also called zone) and state. As I said earlier there are three regionals for the bigger schools 4A (the smaller schools do it a bit differently, but still geographically): Northern, Sunrise and Sunset. There used to be only two (Northern and Southern), but Las Vegas is growing so fast that the Southern regional was split into the Sunrise and Sunset. Right now all three regionals have about 15 schools.
The northern region playoffs are almost always in the Reno area and are officiated by the NNOA, with a few NENOA officials sometimes invited to come out, but mostly they handle one of the smaller classifications and those games are played out near Elko. The Sunrise and Sunset regionals are played in Vegas and worked by the SNOA. The winners and a couple of 2nd and even 3rd place finishers in the regionals qualify for the state tournament. The number of teams invited depends on the sport.
For example, football, soccer, and baseball take 4 teams to state, but basketball takes 8 (4 in some of the smaller classifications). So in soccer or football you have to win your regional to go to state, unless it is your regionals turn to send its 2nd place team and this simply rotates. In basketball, two regionals would send their top 3 teams with the other getting only 2 teams in; again done on a rotating basis.
The officiating at state games is done by mixed crews. Since this is a basketball board, I'll say that in basketball the number of slots alloted is based on the number of teams from your association that are in the tourney. For example, if Vegas has six teams and Reno two, then Vegas will get 75% of the officiating slots on the games. So a crew might be SNOA, SNOA, NNOA. There will be a token NENOA official tossed in on some games. In the years that the Northern regional sends 3 teams and Vegas 5, the number of officials will reflect this balance.
The selection of who fills these slots is done by the commissioner of each Association. I know that they do not even talk to each other when assigning their slots. They simply put a guy here and gal there about a week before the state tourney and then a couple days before the game you find out who you are working with from the other associations. This has created personal conflicts in the past and there have been problems between say a NNOA official and a SNOA official during games involving teams from both regions. Accusations of favoritism in the foul calling is sometimes quite fierce.
The state tourney site has moved back and forth from Vegas to Reno about every 4 years.



[Edited by Nevadaref on Oct 13th, 2003 at 04:00 AM]