Maybe I can offer some insight. Our association has been using 3-man in every High School game since the 1991/1992 season.
Nine years later, we are still the only association in our state that uses 3-man in every one of our games. All of the other associations are using 3-man in selected games only or only in tournament play.
Here are the advantages of using 3-man:
-More experience officials stay in the association and work longer in years due to the decrease of wear and tear physically.
-less experienced officials are given more opportunities to work than ever before. -younger officials are easier to recruit using the 3-man.
-since experienced officials are around longer, they offer great assistance in training first-hand the younger guys/gals.
-younger officials tend to learn quicker 'how to officiate' when two officials are offering insight at halftime and between games.
-less room for misintrepretation of rules. 3 heads are better than 2.
-finally, better court coverage and off-the-ball officiating.
The biggest con:
-can't afford 3. And most of the time it came from the larger schools that were taking the kids to out-of-state Christmas tournaments and/or bought new uniforms each year. The money was there, they didn't want to spend it on officials.
We were fortunate to have a Supervisor and Assigning Officer that had the ability to sell the 3-man concept to the coaches, AD's, and principals. Quite honestly, the first 2 or 3 years are when we had the most problems. But that was to be expected since the transition is very dramatic. However, the last 4 or 5 years have been fantastic. I think now, that most of the schools would not want to return to the 2-man crew.
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