[rainmaker]

Originally posted by icallfouls
Coach, first of all good luck with removing the "deadwood," especially if you are not the assignor in your area. An example, in our area we have an assignor that assigns roughly 7,500 - 10,000 games per year (7th grade thru HS Varsity). We have approximately 400 officials to cover all these games. Not all officials are created equal. The facts are that not every game will have the very best officials working.

If your responsible for selecting the officials for your games and the officials in your area are "independent" contractors, then it helps if you are the big fish in the pond. As an example, if you coach teams from a small school and the program is not very successful, it might be more difficult to get the quality you would like.

Now with all that said, if the real purpose is to help with the development of officials in your area I offer this: If you are not intimate with them, familiarize yourself with the rules (especially the part about judgement, not all contact is a foul), review the casebooks, etc. If you are not willing to do this, then my suggestion is to develop a way to evaluate officials from a coaches perspective. Some of the measurable qualities you can easily identify are: is the official physically fit, can they keep up, can I communicate with the official, professionalism, consistency of official/crew, confidence of the official, etc. If you ever received a T, you have to ask yourself if you were the coach on the other side, would you want the T called, did you in fact deserve it? I am sure that I left some things out, but you should get more replies on this that will prove useful.

The other thing about coaches evaluating officials is the objectivity of the coach, especially after a tough call/game. It is harder to be objective immediately after the game and maybe even a day or two later.

Good luck with your quest!

Jim -- I think he's saying that he's a ref, and that he's looking for a system for refs to evaluate other refs. I'd be interested in what you think of the system we use here (but don't forget that Howard reads this baord sometimes.)