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Originally Posted by GarthB
In an association I belonged to in the past, coaches rated umpires. We found that umpires who had ejections or game ending close plays were rated lower than the other umpires. This occurred to the extent that some D-1 umpires were rated several points below JV umpires working their first varsity games.
Thankfully my current association is more enlightened.
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Let me make this clear, our system of ratings is not a local association issue. This is an IHSA system. The IHSA assigns all playoff games not a local assignor. The coach’s ratings are mixed in with Certified Official/Umpires to come up with the same percentage. Coaches can only rate during varsity contests and they can rate you as many times as you work a varsity game for that school. Certified Umpires can only rate you once per year. The coaches/umpire ratings only count for 5 points total (if you in the 90 percentile of all umpires in the entire state) in a 30 point Power Rating system where other things are factored in. And (you heard this here first) they are going to add another 5 points this coming year for the frequency of attending camps along with another category that gives you 5 points for attending a Level 2 (3 Man in baseball and basketball) or 6 hour clinic in basketball for example. So most umpires/officials in our state worry about 5 points which we cannot control and most of the points in the power rating are almost totally in our control (percentage of varsity games, promotion level, open book Part 1 Exam just to name a few). And it has been proven that losing coaches rate umpires/official only percentage points apart from each other which it is not that big of deal. And the Sports Administrators that do the assigning for all playoff contests can make decisions outside of the power rating if they choose to. So things like what you have done while they were watching you might play a much bigger role than what your actual power rating is. You can help yourself or hurt yourself by what you do when observed. I cannot speak for other places, but we worry waaaayyyyy too much about something that is not going to really make that much of a difference. So if you are 90 percent in your coaches/umpire ratings and you are just an "X" as an umpire, you might not get an opportunity that a "C" umpire will get and they are in the 70 percent range.
Peace