Biggest rules/mechanics changes of the last 5 years

[BillyMac]

Originally Posted by BillyMac

I predict lots of doubleheaders for officials (which, over forty-plus years, has not been the norm for my local board).

Originally Posted by ilyazhito

If 3 officials becomes a thing, then the 2 officials doing the JV game could either be joined by a fresh official, or someone who worked a middle school game earlier (or is coming from another game).

Here in official-deficient Connecticut, the push (more of a slight nudge) to go to three officials will probably take a (hopefully temporary) back seat to just getting two officials assigned to games.

Keep in mind that in my little corner of Connecticut we never "mix up" genders on the same afternoon/night, at the same site, it's either all boys, or all girls, typically freshmen (4:00 p.m.), junior varsity (5:30 p.m.), and varsity (7:00 p.m.). While the school's boys team may be at home, the girls team may be on the road, or vice versa.

Recent doubleheader assignments, locally rare before our numbers starting dropping a few years ago, are usually of two types.

One type of doubleheader assignment is for the same two officials to work both the freshmen and junior varsity games, with two "fresh" officials working the varsity game.

Another is for the same two officials to work both the junior varsity and varsity game while a different crew worked the earlier freshmen game.

Last season, between low numbers to begin with, officials opting out due to COVID, illness (COVID, influenza, etc.), injuries, and makeup games due snow, we had a few guys working tripleheaders (freshmen, junior varsity, varsity), both physically and mentally demanding, not a desirable situation, but a nice payday ($230).

Things got so bad last season that our assigner had to tell many schools that he couldn't assign "snow" makeup games on certain dates and that they had to come up with alternate dates. He had to tell two very large city school systems, with several middle schools each, that he could not assign any officials to their middle school games until late February and March, after other school systems middle school game schedules had completed.