After having moved to a new state twice in the last 4 years, I have a an equally strong opinion regarding the flawed structure of referee evaluation and game assignments. Is there no answer, no good solution. I think the only real solution is that you have to have leadership that is incredibly selfless. You have to have assignors who passionately believe in helping good officials get assigned to the games they deserve, who are willing to devote time and energy to finding out who are the best and most deserving officials. Leadership like that is rare, in my opinion. I am confident that there are several guys in every association who have the talent to recognize the various grades of officials. Unfortunately, those guys are also the ones who are working lots of games, have families at home, and just may not have the desire to put that talent to work.
I moved to Cleveland and got lucky. Great assignors who gave me opportunities to show my stuff and then found me great games to work. Now I move to Idaho and find the exact opposite. Assignor has yet to see me work. Spent an entire year working subvarsity, with lower rung officials who neither had the power or interest in helping me get recognized. Went from working all varsity top level basketball and some small college ball to working not even one large school varsity girl or boy game.
I took a similar approach both times I moved -- lots of emails, meet the assigner face to face, take all the games given, letter of recommendation explaining my level of experience, even game tape available upon request -- but drastically different results from the two moves.
If you have not been in the situation where you were screwed out of games you deserved to be doing, and for a long period of time, they you just cannot understand the frustration of it all. This is not about paying your dues. I paid my dues several times over but because of a flawed system, you are completely at the mercy of the professionalism and time-devotion of your assignors. I have been on the otherside, where my buddy was the assigner and I was able to get games that would challenge me.
Any system where you are powerless to say something, for fear of getting buried even deeper, is a very flawed system. Unfortunately, because I am new, there is no option to get in there and try to fix the problems myself. An attempt like that would only blow up in my face.
wow, done venting, I think I earned at least one vent after a year dropping from college ball to jv ball
