Recruitment and Retention of Officials

[crosscountry55]

Originally Posted by Camron Rust

If you move that much, you can't really expect too much. They have to have a chance go observe you before you can expect to move very high. Sounds like you kept moving before they had a chance to move you through their system. Moving up to where you belong can happen, and should in a reasonable time, but even 1 season in a new area isn't that out of line in order to qualify to move up. It isn't like they made you start over on a 5+ year process to move up....or did they tell you that?

First couple states/associations I was new, so no issues there. Of the subsequent four, two basically made me start the process from scratch and could have cared less about my résumé or what they saw from camps/clinics. Kansas....awesome. Went to camps, got fair evaluations over the summer, and got a full varsity schedule on year #1. The last state (the one I'm in now) was a little like what you described in Portland, except instead of six weeks of JV ball it was basically a whole season of it. I kind of felt like I was being "used" to cover the JV schedule because I was new and there weren't many JV officials to go around. Fortunately that problem has eased the last two years, but there is still a mix of JV games in my schedule that are hard to shake. On the bright side, I've had a chance to mentor some young officials which is rewarding. So all in all not a bad schedule; I'm not complaining.

I hope when I retire I can do like BNR and stay in jealousy-inducing physical shape while finally establishing solid roots somewhere.