Monthly D1 Assigning?

[BillyMac]

Originally Posted by Raymond

"The D1 leagues on the East Coast (consortiums) have decided this year to hold their schedules and release periodically. Most have released November but not December yet! As you might imagine this puts D2 and D3 in a fix!" Sorry Billy, explaining to us how high school assigning works where you officiate will add no insight to this conversation. I still referee high school basketball and this has nothing to do with my high school schedule.

While I fully agree that I can not add any expert (or otherwise) insight to this conversation (way out of my league), there is some similarity between college and high school assigning, but only if one assumes that the high school officials work lower level (recreation, travel, middle school games not assigned high school assigner, i.e., Catholic middle schools), a similarity that I can demonstrate by rephrasing Raymond's email.

High school assignments will be held and released periodically. As you might imagine, this puts recreation and travel assignments in a fix.

Many years ago, before email and computer assigning, in the days of snail mail and phone calls, we got our full season high school assignments first, and after that we got our full season (from multiple low level assigners, park and recreation directors, league officers or coaches, hometown officials, etc.) recreation and travel assignments (with weather related changes coming later), with low level assignments coming in some type of priority order based on officials preferences.

After the invention of email and computer assigning, and after a particularly nasty winter of bad weather, our high school assigner discovered that it would be better for him to "trickle" out our high school assignments two weeks at a time. Of course, that forced recreation assigners and travel assigners to do the same.

Last year with COVID, our high school assigner often published assignments days, or even hours, in advance. While I no longer work lower level (recreation, travel) assignments, I can imagine the problems ("fix") this generated for lower level assigners.

Apples and oranges (D3 college game has little to do with sixth grade girls travel game), but they're still both fruit (and need assigned officials).

It's still a hierarchy, granted, not as important, but it's still a hierarchy.

Of course, many of you work for multiple assigners at multiple levels, multiple high school assigners (different leagues, individual schools, different states), and multiple college assigners (multiple levels and multiple leagues at the same level), making for very complex assignments, with lots of "big money' at stake, lots of miles to travel (many by plane), and many assigners to appease.

I've never had more than one high school assigner (same all across the six local boards in Connecticut), and I've never worked for more than two, or three, low level assigners at any one time.

And I only pledged allegiance and was only totally loyal to two assigners (high school and Catholic middle school). For the rest, for low level games, easy come, easy go. Maybe I'm available, maybe I'm not, maybe thank you, maybe no thank you. I have skills and experience that are needed, there are not an unlimited number of available, experienced, skilled officials, I work on my terms, I can always shop around. Supply and demand.

The college woes that many of you are experiencing doesn't come close to comparing to the high school and low level woes that high school guys like me can experience.