I have thoughts on this, but they're really not important.

Officials have every right to choose to not work on the boys or girls side here.

Assigners have every right to choose not to use those officials, then. I'm about 10 years into assigning varsity for 24 schools, girls and boys. There are some officials I assign only boys to - they work a college schedule and we have a prearranged agreement.

Some other officials have tried this and frankly I would rather hire a dependable crew for more games who will work on both sides. Giving too many crews boys only means I have to give a lopsided numbers to other crews, and I don't want to do that, either.

And we pay the same on both sides, obviously ($80 this year, $85 next year), and use 3-person crews for every game.

Well, here we have a lot of assignors that only assign one gender. And many of them that assign boys do not give a lot of first opportunities to girls officials or officials that work a lot of girl's games as their primary. Now with the shortage, we might not have as much of that as an issue, but I never get asked to work girl's games anymore because I said long time ago what I was going to do and not do. I even interviewed for an assignor's job this past year and they were going to keep an assigning job with both genders they separated them after some interviews when they realized there were potential assignors that might not have the footprint with certain gender officials.

I am so glad honestly that we have a choice. At the end of the day, no one is going to make me work on something when I leave my house. If you cannot use be because of the choice, I can stay home.

Peace