[JRutledge]

Every state, every region is different. It depends on the way officials get games and who makes those decisions. In most of the state of Illinois games are given out by ADs and each AD as their own criteria for hiring officials. In the Chicago areas and larger areas like Peoria, Springfield, assignors usually do the work of getting official. Even the assignors look for different things.

I know of one assignor that has a website and according to him, you must start out at the freshman level in his conferences and slowly move up until you get evaluations that allow you to move up to the JV games, then the non-conference games and then the varsity. This process alone could take 4 years to get varsity games in his conference. Now, it does not appear that he makes any distiction in state ranking or previous years of experience.

Now I know of other assignors that if you are good, they will put you wherever you are availible to them, and that could mean varsity games.

So my suggestion, ask a lot of questions of officials, officials association, ADs and anyone that might have direct knowledge of who officiates games in your state and/or region. Do not just ask one person or one official ask several. Better yet ask those that either make the decisions or the officials that are at the level you want to be at. Sometimes asking the wrong people can take you in the wrong direction so ask the people that are at the level or making the decisions at the level you want to be at. If that is varsity ask varsity officials and varsity assignnors or ADs.