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Old Tue Jan 03, 2006, 03:59pm
bgtg19 bgtg19 is offline
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Join Date: Nov 2004
Posts: 276
Ideally, there probably would never be an occasion for an official to work any level game involving the school system that employs her/him. But, since we do not live in an ideal world, we must accept that there are less than ideal situations. Setting aside the problems that face schools and assignors, what should *our* approach as officials be?

I'd like to suggest the following:

1. Never, under any circumstances (any? well, I can't think of any), accept an assignment to work a varsity game involving your employing school district.

2. Never accept an assignment to work a sub-varsity game involving your employing school district unless the coaches and/or ADs of both schools agree. For example, the day of the game your school's AD gets a cancellation call from an official and the AD is scrambling to find a substitute for the Freshman/JV double header. You might tell the AD to keep looking, but if s/he truly cannot find someone else, you'll pinch hit as long as the head coaches for each game agree. Disclose the conflict to the coaches and ask if they want you to work the game. They'll agree ... the other choice is to have a single official work the games. Having first agreed to it, they cannot later complain about it. (Well, they can complain, but the complaint ought not to go very far.) The fact that you are disclosing the issue and dealing with it in a transparent way will (or should) remove any question about there being a "homer" motive.

For what it is worth, it sounds to me like the problem described in the original post is a problem that would repeat itself in games not involving that particular official's school....
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