[drinkeii]

I have a slightly different perspective on this. I run an intramural program within my high school. We have approximately 960 students, and I run four sports - Volleyball, Basketball, a 3-on-3 basketball tournament, and Flag Football. Most seasons, I have approximately 230 students from the school involved in that particular sport that is in season.

I'll confine my comments to basketball, since that is what this thread started with. I have 8 officials this year for my league, which contains 22 teams and a total of around 180 full length games (not bad, for a high school intramural program), and involves 240 students. I train the officials myself, being a PIAA official for 4 years in basketball, and a few more years in a couple of other sports. I usually have most of the refs stick around after they start for the remainder of their high school career. This year, I had 3 veteran refs, and 5 newbies.

In general, I am able to control complaints about the officiating, which is mainly due to the fact that I am in attendance at probably 85-90% of the games (we only have one game running at a time), and a trusted colleague is present at the rest. However, the kids do complain, and the officials do mess things up occasionally. They do not get paid - we have snacks for them after the games, and they receive a half a credit for community service from the school for the amount of time they put into their work.

I do training over the summer before the season, by having them come in, discuss rules, practice mechanics, and then do some officiating of the open gym kids that come in during the summer when I do open it up for our students. In general, some of them pick it up quickly, and some struggle throughout the season. I have our assignor assign the officials reasonably carefully, not putting two newbies on a game until late in the season, and putting two veterans (or myself and a veteran) on the games which would be more likely to be higher levels of competition.

I will admit that the officials, for the most part, are not as good as some of the newer officials in our chapter. However, some of them are better than many of the officials in our chapter - they're able to get into position, they're able to recognise the difference between minor things to let go and things that need to be called, and they are trained in the real rules. I do agree with the previous poster that indicated that a lack of rules knowledge ("He's Reachin! or He's over the back!) generates a lot of the conflicts. Oftentimes, certified officials seem to want to call a game they wrote, by ignoring certain concepts like reffing the defense (where you would actually get a decent number of PC calls, as opposed to almost always calling blocks) or hand checks (which seems to be a lost call in many leagues I watch). There are several officials I have had in running this program for 5 years that I would put up against many of the veterans in our area, and expect them to do just as well as they do.

I don't feel you get what you pay for in this case. I feel that you get some people who are good, and some who are not destined to be officials, but as long as they have control of the game, and are "enforcing" (for lack of a better word) the rules, they are doing a good job.