Raymond, Rich, you're exactly right. There is not enough systematic training at the high school level. Some states make camp attendance a playoff requirement, but it appears that not enough officials go to camp even then. If local associations are able to put on camps and on court training sessions, either on their own or with state support, the quality of officiating will increase, because officials will have more practice. As of now, most officials only get game experience, so if all their games are 2-person (MS, Subvarsity, and rec games for non-varsity officials), how will they learn enough 3-person to become competent enough to do varsity games? If states require camp attendance every year (whether the local association, HS at the state level, an independent teaching camp, or a college camp), and provide some source of scholarships/support local association camps, more officials will be better trained, and we won't see a's extreme of a drop-off from varsity officials who know 3-person to newer varsity officials and JV officials who don't.

I’m glad SC is not a “crew state.” I can only imagine the bad habits and lackadaisical officiating that goes on when you work with the same people every night.

And the writer of this article implies that having 2-person crews where the guys have worked together for a long time is somehow better than a 3-person crew. If you’re a good official you can work with anyone on a given night; you shouldn’t need your “usual crewmates.”

I like it both ways. Of course, my usual crew goes to camps and teaches at them and tries very hard to do things the right way. But I'm just as happy working with 2 people I've never met before.

Sounds lovely, but there are plenty of officials who would give it up altogether rather than going to camp every year. You cannot force officials to be more invested in this job than they want to be. You can run them off, but that doesn’t help the shortage at all. We already sacrifice a lot of time and money. A lot of people are not going to spend more time and money going to camps over the summer, being away from work and family without making any money. We only get paid for the games we work; at some point the unpaid time devoted to officiating becomes too much.

And what about college officials? Should they have to go to a high school camp annually? You’d have an uprising from the high school guys unless the requirements were the same for the college officials working high school, and you’d have college guys quitting left and right before going to a high school camp. And I wouldn’t really blame them.

We have recently started requiring camp attendance once every three years in SC, and even with that minimal requirement we have had many people quit. It might seem minimal to me, but the bottom line is officials aren’t willing to do it.

If the college guys teach at a high school camp, it would count for purposes of attendance. This way, college guys would participate in high school camps as high school officials do, just in a different capacity.

I guess there is a reason that HS camp fees are lower than college camp fees ($50 for varsity camps in GA and SC, $100 for post-season credit camps in GA), so that HS officials wouldn't have to pay too much for camp.

However, what other solutions would work if yearly training camps are not the answer? College officials do yearly camps because it is a conference requirement, and they are invested in the process, but what systematic training solution can get HS officials to a higher level of competence that would increase the potential varsity and/or playoff pools of officials? The $64,000 question still remains how to prepare subversion officials with all (or mostly) 2-person experience for 3-person games at the varsity level.

This is a business. Just like any business, there are people that will invest in training that others will never invest in. First of all this idea that college officials are different is rather silly. College officials are not always only college officials. Unless someone is working a full D1 schedule, chances are they are still working some level of college ball. Even in my secondary officiating state, all that is required is to attend a certain number of meetings to be eligible for the playoffs. If you do not attend those meetings, it does not hurt your overall standing for the most part or the games you get. Actually the same applies in college officials as well. You are not required to go to many meetings at a certain point.

Peace