Officials/Umpire Shortage.

[LRZ]

This just in: the first local cancellation for no officials--a middle school lacrosse game.

[BillyMac]

Originally Posted by LRZ

This just in: the first local cancellation for no officials--a middle school lacrosse game.

Tough to find officials who are available at 3:30 in the afternoon, even without COVID, for any sport.

Originally Posted by BillyMac

... our assigner had to ask many schools to reschedule games to dates when there were more available officials, including two school systems (half dozen middle schools each) that had to postpone their entire middle school seasons to start in late February.

Originally Posted by BillyMac

... my local board had to politely refuse to assign middle school officials in two major city school systems due to our lack of available afternoon officials, so these two cites postponed their middle school games until later in the season ...

Several years ago, not being able to get high school lacrosse (considered a "niche" sport in Connecticut) officials to work scrimmages was the impetuous for our state interscholastic sports governing body to mandate paid scrimmages for all high school sports.

Field hockey (another "niche" sport) was also problematic in Connecticut, and also had something to do with the paid scrimmage mandate.