Wanted, Reward, Dead Or Alive ...

[JRutledge]

Originally Posted by ilyazhito

This makes sense, that there are artificial barriers in place to people moving up. If there are fewer officials, period, this is problematic, because it prevents games from being covered. There are several possibilities to get around this: take "ready-made" officials from college/university intramural programs, recruit downward by getting local college officials to work high school games on their days off and to mentor high school officials, or accelerate newer officials judiciously by providing targeted training (put subvarsity officials in a program to teach 3P mechanics and have them work rec/travel/adult games that would otherwise be 2P as 3P games for experience, with spot varsity assignments to the best trainees/those near the end of the program, or assign MS officials to work 8th/9th grade rec/travel games, with some freshman/JV assignments to get the best of them next-level exposure. Those with existing experience (transfers/dual members/intramural officials) can be evaluated and accelerated as needed).

I have some experience with college intramural officials as one of my better friends runs an intermural program on a major college campus. One of the issues with officials from those programs is they often do not have the transportation or the time to work games all the way out. This is especially true if they do not have the desire or commitment to the craft yet. But those that get the bug often do very well, but it is getting those out of their comfort zone to officiate real games. The intermural environment is very different than a game where the bullet are really flying in an actual middle school or high school environment. My friend had done a lot to get those officials to work games and it often does not work for most. Again the behavior of the participants and fans often is the main deterrent to those getting into the profession.

Originally Posted by ilyazhito

Any other solutions to alleviate the numbers crunch and reduce artificial constraints? Recruiting college officials down might put experienced officials in the playoffs or on high-profile games while allowing younger officials to work alongside and learn from them.

I do feel we need to do a better job to recruit younger officials. The problem is again that younger people do not see the desire to get into officiating in any sport. They do not see the value in being apart of a sport that they played. We even have a harder time to get young women that played the sport. Often the people that officiate are men that never played the game at any significant level in the first place. Most of the people we get here are men that who watched a child play sports in high school or college and then they get into officiating to stay connected to the sport.

I run a "Beginning Officials Class" and almost all the new students are people in the classes are in their 40s and older.

Peace