Quote:
Originally posted by jayedgarwho
For our AAU ball, 2-person crews usually work three or even four games consecutively in a weekend tournament (then they come back the next day and do it again). These are 28 or 32-minute games, tipping off 70 or 75 minutes apart, so there is little or no downtime for the officials.
In a sizable minority of the games (15-25% maybe?), however, the officials elect not to switch positions on the dead ball -- or ever, in fact. Maybe they will switch at a quarter of half break -- although in a game last week with two 16-minute halves, I heard them agree that they shouldn't switch at the half, because the teams' switching ends would negate their switch.
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Three or four games in a row with 2-man crews? I don't care how young or what kind of shape the official is in, it's impossible for that official to be physically able to get into position in the latter stages of their latter games. There's only so much in the tank to start with, and you don't get a chance to re-fill it when you work that many consecutive games. So, what it boils down to, coach, is you have the officials opting to save what's left of their legs for when it's needed for actual game situations, or maybe using up some of their available "gas" on switches instead. Your choice, coach. If you'd rather have them switch, don't be surprised when they're not in position to nail that block/charge call in their third consecutive game. Hell, if they're in their 4th consecutive game, don't expect hem to be in position a LOT of the time. It's just too much physically. Most state high school tournaments limit the officials to ONE game a day for those exact reasons. And that's with 3-man crews!
The solution? Hire enough officials so that they are assigned a maximum of two, maybe three games a day, with at least three hours to recover between EACH single game. If the tournament convenors aren't willing to do that, then they're the ones that you should be complaining to- not the officials. And if there's not enough good officials available to hire, as is usually the case, then you don't really have much choice about putting up with the officials' fatigue.
Make sense?
[Edited by Jurassic Referee on Jul 17th, 2004 at 05:00 AM]