[stripes]

I moved to AZ (and then away again), but felt like I was treated very fairly in Phoenix. You are initially assigned a ranking that is just for officials who transfer into the state and being a state with a large influx of people, they get a lot of transfers each year. They hold a scrimmage prior to the season (1st or 2nd week of Nov) with two teams participating where the transfer officials can show their stuff on the court. It was a game situation and we wore our full uniforms. The GPBOAC (the governing body for officials in Phoenix) had a committee there to watch and rank officials on the spot and the AIA assigner was present too. You were assigned a random partner and did a full quarter (with a stopped clock).

I thought it was perfectly fair and I was assigned right were I thought I should be. I was afraid that I would be assigned games at a lower level than I had worked for the previous 10 years, but that was not the case. In AZ, you have a permanent partner and that was a little difficult to deal with because I didn't know the officials and they didn't know me, so i worked as a floater for the first half of the season. At that point, I filled in permanently for a guy who broke his ankle. It was overwhelmingly positive for me.