[chapmaja]

Originally Posted by Mark T. DeNucci, Sr.

Yesterday, Mark, Jr., and I had a VAR baseball DH scheduled for 04:00pm.

The DH was originally assigned to us on Arbiter in September 2015 with the contract showing School "A" as the Home School, and School "B" as the Visiting School, and the DH to be played at School "A". The contract was modified in November 2015 changing the Visiting School from School "B" to TBA. And the contract stayed the way.

As is our custom, on Wednesday, May 11, 2016, I sent an email to the AD at School "A" confirming our assignment to umpire the DH. I attached a copy of our Arbiter contracts and cc'ed our assigner. We both received Arbiter generated reminder emails for the DH on Friday, May 13, 2016.

We arrived at the game site at 03:00pm at the same time that players from School "A" were starting to arrive and none of them were wearing uniforms. The VAR Head Coach arrived at 03:10pm and when we asked him who their opponent was for today's DH he informed us that there was no game scheduled for today, !

Mark immediately started to check our email accounts while I checked our Arbiter accounts. There were no emails notifying us that the DH had been canceled, AND, the DH had mysteriously disappeared from our Arbiter schedules, !

I called the AD's office at 03:23pm. Her office phone had an out going message stating that she would be out of the office from 01:30pm on to supervise the JrHS league track championship which School "A" was hosting. I left a message telling her why I was calling and asked her to all me at her earliest convenience. Still waiting for a return phone call as I type this post.

When we got home I sent an email to our assigner telling him what happened including copies of our Arbiter contracts and Arbiter reminder emails. Still no response from him.

The game fee for the DH was $100. The StateHSAA's standard game contract has the following stipulation (which is in effect even if the game contract is an Arbiter contract):


2. Contracts affected by acts of God shall be maintained according to this schedule:

a. Contests cancelled prior to the departure of the official for the contest shall present no financial obligation to either party.

b. Contests cancelled or postponed after the arrival of the official but prior to the beginning of the contest shall result in payment of one third of the contract fee or round trip mileage if mileage is a part of the original contract.

c. Cancellation or suspension of contests begun shall result in full payment of contracted fee.

NOTE: When an official is hired to officiate more than one contest on a day at one site he/she will be only entitled to receive pay for contests concluded or underway prior to suspending play. EXAMPLE: A baseball double header suspended before the second game begins entitles the official to pay for game one only.


Since I have not yet heard from the AD or our assinger, I can only speculate as to whether the cancellation was "an act of God" or not "an act of God" but since the game was on our Arbiter schedules one minute and gone the next, I would bet dollars to donuts that the cancellation was not "an act of God".

Needless to say, Mark and I feel that we should be paid the entire game fee of $100.

What say you?

MTD, Sr.

If this was the northern of the two states you work, try getting ahold of the assigner again, although if it's the one who assigned you for softball Saturday he can be a PITA to work with some of the time. If he doesn't respond and you get nowhere with the school AD, contact the StateHSAA person in charge of officials. He is usually pretty good about working with umpires on situations like this, provided the school will actually responded to him.

If this is the southern of the two states, I don't know how they handle it.

I do know that under the northern state's policies, that a game cancelled for a reason other than an Act of God reason shall require the school to pay the full game fee listed on the contracts.

I also would not put it past the assigner in question to be notified at the last minute and remove a game from Arbiter rather than list it as a cancelled game. I know, working as an assigner with Arbiter, that the game can be listed as cancelled, which opens the umpire up for other assignments.

We have had a major issue in the northern state with schools dropping officials from assignments at the last minute due to their scheduling mistakes. VB has had this become a major issue, thus the reason the umpires person for the stateHSAA made a very clear mention of the rules at the assigners meeting this summer (not that the VB association has decided to support officials who have been screwed by schools cancelling assignments).