Evalutions by coaches

[jdmara]

I belong to a local association for both basketball and baseball. Unfortunately, the association does not have the resources to provide an intensive evaluation program for officials. Most of all this is a result of covering such a large number of schools over a very large area.

Anyways, I was wandering around the internet a few months ago and found an association that has an online form for administrators/coaches/etc to evaluate the performance of officials for their contests. It is VERY similar to the sportsmanship form we have to fill out for the state online. I thought it was a possible solution to the lack of evaluation in our association since I believe that some feedback is better than no feedback. Additionally, I believe it would be a benefit to the assigner from the association because red flags may be risen that the organization should know about. Case and point, last night I heard a doozy of a story from a set of coaches about Monday that I reported to the assigner this morning:

"Sophomore double header. One of the umpires was late for the game. He ended up arriving about 15 minutes after the start. I’m sure there was a reasonable explanation for the tardiness (ie last moment substitution due to illness/work commitment/etc) and that’s what I told the coaches. They weren’t upset about that. What they were questioning was his unprofessionalism in the field. Supposedly after an attempted pickoff the runner slide back into first base. He just barely made it back. For some unexplained reason there was a break in the action (I would assume to clean off the base or defensive conference, I really don’t know) and the base umpire was over at first as the coach was lecturing the player about watching the pitcher for movement. The umpire interjected himself into the conversation and said, “All the runner has to do is watch me. I can tell when the pitcher is going to attempt a pick off and I start moving towards first before the pitcher even throws it.” The coaches are just stunned an umpire would be so unprofessional and help a team basically cheat."

Needless to say I got a call this morning from the assigner who thanked me for the heads up and that professionalism needed to be addressed because of another incident that happened this week as well with another crew.

I talked with him about the idea of having an evaluation form on our website for administrators/coaches/etc and he thought it has potential as well. Do any of your associations has similar means to evaluate officials? Obviously, each evaluation will have to be judged with a grain of salt depending on the evaluator but I believe the concept has promise if done correctly. I graciously volunteered my time to sift through the generated e-mails (which I'll probably come to regret ) but I did so because I think it is a good direction for the association.

Any thoughts? If your association has an online form and would like to share it with me, I would great appreciate it!

-Josh