Next Generation Of Officials ...

[BillyMac]

Originally Posted by Raymond

Article about a high school coach who started a sports officiating class.

I can't comment on Virginia (but probably the same), but we have a major shortage of officials, in many sports, here in Connecticut.

In basketball, an official may now often work a freshman, junior varsity, varsity, tripleheader. Sometimes an official may have to work alone, with no partner. This pretty much never happened in past years.

In the past, local officials would often complain about the quantity and quality of games they were assigned. Now they just complain about quality.

For the first forty-two years of my basketball officiating career, I never once had to consider this, but for the past two years I was definitely overworked.

Along with the NFHS, our state CIAC is constantly looking for new ideas (recruitment tables at state tournament games, recruitment posters in college locker rooms, etc,) to recruit new officials.

This could just be another arrow in the quiver.