COVID Aftermath ...

[BillyMac]

Just got an email with some sobering figures from our local board's secretary/treasurer.

Before last season, we had 300 working members (servicing about 70 high schools and many middle schools). Over the past fifteen years we've been somewhere between 300 and 325 members.

Due to safety concerns about COVID, 40% of those 300 members chose not to be assigned games last season.

And now we've had many retirements. We now have only 255 working officials for next season, lowest number I can remember since before we merged with a small, non-IAABO "girls" association about fifteen years ago, including about a half-dozen newly trained members from our most recent very small COVID cadet class. We normally train about two dozen new members each year.

Many of those who retired were outstanding, highly experienced (25-plus, 30-plus, 35-plus, 40-plus years), veteran officials, some of whom were probably already close to thinking about retiring from officiating. After talking to some of them at our recent end-of-year banquet (postponed a few months due to COVID) it appears that the time off this past season helped them to decide and just pushed them over the edge of the retirement cliff.

The NFHS, and other such organizations, blames poor fan behavior for the lack of officials in many sports.

Is something like this (COVID, advancing age, poor fan behavior) going on anywhere else?

[bob jenkins]

Originally Posted by BillyMac

Is something like this (COVID, advancing age, poor fan behavior) going on anywhere else?

Yes. Almost everywhere in almost all sports.

[Raymond]

If you Google search "Covid and sports officiating shortages", you'll see stories from around the country.

[Stat-Man]

Basketball officials' numbers were definitely down this year. A number of officials opted out because of COVID, others sat out because they didn't want to wear masks while officiating, and many who were debating retirement from officiating finally found themselves a good reason to finally retire.

For basketball, this meant that many sub-varsity crews would work both the freshman and JV game at the same site. On occasion, a crew might be assigned a JV/Varsity doubleheader (with two of the three varsity officials doing the JV game) if the teams playing didn't have a freshman game. JV officials were also asked to stick around whenever possible to make sure the varsity game had a full crew. This is already done informally, but it was emphasized more this past season.

The shortage of officials was more apparent in the Spring, at least for baseball and softball. I was umpiring games for either sport any day that wasn't blocked for work or personal reasons with one particular day where I had a middle school baseball game at one site followed by a CYO softball game at another site. One of my partners told me that our assigner only had 2 baseball umpires for every 5 softball umpires in our pool of officials which I could easily believe because he sent an email out after a baseball game of mine was rained out to tell the host school not to make up the game the next day because there weren't any baseball umpires available.

[BillyMac]

Originally Posted by Stat-Man

... many who were debating retirement from officiating finally found themselves a good reason to finally retire.

Bingo. Same here.