Referee Shortage Discussion-- 127 unfilled varsity games

[Stat-Man]

Originally Posted by jTheUmp

In fact, last year I worked a handful of games with two VERY experienced officials, who have probably 65 years of experience and probably a dozen state semi-final and final games between them.... and I was the R each time, despite only 7 years experience and zero state tournament assignments to my name.

In what was the second varsity game of my career (a game where I was called late in the afternoon to be a sub), I noticed in Arbiter that I was slotted as the R. Naturally, the most veteran official in the crew had some fun with this, but I took the ribbing in stride. It also helped that I had time to do some quick research on both teams in the game to offer meaningful talking points to start the discussion.

Originally Posted by jTheUmp

That's certainly not the way it works around here... a lot of times, we designate who the R's going to be when we're in the locker room prior to the game. And it's sometimes as simple as "you sent the email to the AD? You're the R."

In my varsity debut, one of my partners told the other, "You arrived last, so you're the R tonight."