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MadCityRef
Does OAOA also assign the playoffs?
What a great question:
This is what is happening in Oregon:
1) By 2010 ANY umpire in the State of Oregon that wants to work ANY level of ANY school size must be OOCEP certified. Currently the only way to do this is to take our certified Clinic for three umpire crews.
2) The three umpire crew clinics were begun last year as we did three separate locations in the state. We have two more scheduled for this year and we plan three more next season. This will leave us with a "super clinic" to be held in March of 2010 and that will complete the certification for playoff umpires.
3) If any region in the state does not have enough "certified" umpires the OSAA will send umpires from other regions to work the playoff games and will charge the local association the added costs for those officials.
4) Currently in Oregon all playoff umpires come from the association that umpires the home team’s games during the regular season. This is true up to and including the state semi-finals.
5) The state finals (a two day operation with two games on Friday and three games on Saturday) currently selects umpires that are nominated by local associations. As example since my group (the PBUA) work more schools that any other group in the state we get four "spots" out of the 15 game day umpires. Also since we work over 2/3 of the largest schools (by attendance) we will always have 2 of the 3 umpires in the game for the 6A championship.
6) In the future the OAOA will be responsible to have evaluators move around the state to review the potential umpires that are being named by their local group. The intent is to eventually make sure that the 15 umpires working the finals are the very best umpires that are available. Please note: there are rules being developed to insure that a number of umpires can qualify to work the finals -- we are working on "how many years" must an umpire sit out before returning to the state championship games.
This is way too long of an answer but the OAOA (Oregon Athletic Officials Association) State Baseball Umpire Committee has been in place for two years. In that time we have written a definition of Malicious Contact, have designed an official state line-up card (which has also been used by the softball groups in our state), have developed a criteria for a local association to host a three umpire crew clinic, have written the workbook and handouts and certified the trainers for the three umpire clinic, have taught three clinics AND we have written the definitive manual (bible) for how to train Two Umpire Crews for every umpire in the state.
We have just begun to CHANGE the way high school games are umpired in this state.
Regards,
Tim Christensen
Secretary
Oregon Athletic Officials Association
State Baseball Umpire Committee
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