I officiate in a small rural association with a relatively small number of officials. Some of our officials are teachers. Some of our officials are parents of players on the teams that we serve. Our commissioner does a pretty decent job of avoiding conflict of interest situations. In our case, however, some perceived or real conflict of interests are unavoidable. We have several officials that have kids playing on the varsity team. Our commissioner assigns those officials to do the JV games of that school on home game nights. It's either that or not have those officials available at all that night because they are there supporting their kids anyway. Is this a conflict of interests? Probably. Is it wrong? In my opinion, no. We don't have the numbers that a big city association would have. I have seen our officials do games in these conflict situations and I have not once seen the visiting team get a 'homer' effort.
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