Three Cheers for One of Our Own!

[SD Referee]

Originally Posted by BillyMac

Last year our local board made a major change, officials that were voted into the state tournament by both boys coaches and girls coaches had to choose either boys or girls but not both (as was allowed in the past).

One side argued that if officials worked hard doing both boys and girls games all season long that they deserved to do both genders in the tournament if voted in by both sets of coaches.

The other side argued that this new system allowed more officials to work state tournament games.

This year we started another new local procedure, allowing officials to indicate if they wanted to work only boys regular season games, or only girls regular season games, or both genders.

All these recent changes have led to some officials becoming "girls officials", and others becoming "boys officials".

I 100% agree with NOT letting officials do both a boys and a girls state tourney. This isn't splitting the atom. This is officiating high school basketball. I think we all know A LOT of qualified and deserving officials that could handle big postseason games.

I also believe every state has a small group of officials that think they are gods and are better than everybody else, thus they think they deserve to do both boys and girls tourneys and get every big game in between. Kudos to your area for giving more officials the opportunity.

I also do NOT believe in becoming a "girls official" or a "boys official". I think we all agree that there are a lot of bad girls games out there. Boys too. We have such a big ego that you are only going to do boys games? That has always baffled me as we have guys in our area that will only do boys games. They only want to do boys state tourneys and they usually get their way. It's annoying and I just don't understand the ego involved.

[BillyMac]

Originally Posted by SD Referee

I 100% agree with NOT letting officials do both a boys and a girls state tourney.

We have six local boards (all IAABO) in Connecticut and we were the last local board to restrict tournament officials to only one gender, so now we're on par with the rest of the state.

At the end of last season a few guys won election to our local executive board on a "both genders" platform. Same thing again this year (election's in a few weeks). Depending on the results of the election we may go back to "both genders" for the state tournament next year.

I've been out observing our guys and gals in state tournament games almost every night over the past three weeks. All the officials are excellent, but I must say that the officials who were elected and chose to work the boys tournament are a half a tier better than the officials who were selected and chose to work the girls tournament. Not a big difference, hardly noticeable, but there is a slight difference.

[SCalScoreKeeper]

Congrats Rut,
FYI folks the IHSA tournament is available thru the NFHS Network. $9.95 gets you a 30 day pass to watch games from all over our great land.

[JRutledge]

Originally Posted by SCalScoreKeeper

Congrats Rut,
FYI folks the IHSA tournament is available thru the NFHS Network. $9.95 gets you a 30 day pass to watch games from all over our great land.

If you have DirecTV you can get the channel on 665 which is NBC Sports Chicago which will show all the games live. Do not pay for that service if you already have a sports package or some other way to see that channel.

Peace

[JRutledge]

Everyone,

I will be working the 4A Final Championship at 7:30 tonight.

Thanks for the support. You have any questions let me know.

Peace