State assignment limitations?

[Camron Rust]

Originally posted by DownTownTonyBrown
Do any of your associations have limitations set on how often one can attend the State Tournament?

I was just notified of the four local officials our association is sending to the Girls State Tournament.

Three of the four are also going two weeks later to work at the Boys State Tournament.

Most of these seem to be permanent fixtures that our association sends year after year after year. All of these individuals have gone to the State Tournament before... some of them many multiple times.

Of course they also get to do most of the preliminary (District) games deciding who goes to the State Tournament.

Are they good officials? Yes. Heads and shoulders better than everyone else? Not even close. Yes I feel slighted - many in our association feel slighted.

I'm one of the President's of our association and I think many of our officials would like to see the wealth shared. Does anyone have recommendations that we could put in our By-Laws that would help us get tournament assignments distributed more equitably among our officials.

This is part of a debate going on here (Portland, OR) right now. Who should go and what, if any, limitations should there be.

There are 5 tourneys: 4A boys, 4A girls, 3A boys/girls, 2A boys/girls, and 1A boys/girls.

Right now, the top 14 vote getters get a tourney assignment and an official can only go to one tourney in a given year.

In addition, an official can not go to a tourney more than two years in a row. They must sit out every third year. (This is a statewide rule).

This effectively uses a pool of 21 officials for the tourneys with a few changes from year to year.

There are proposals that would expand this in various manners to include a few to several more people in the rotation. (We have about 350 people in the association).

The biggest point made is that the process is so subjective (by peer and coach vote) that how can you really say that the person that is constantly #22-25 is really not as good as the person that is #18-21.

In any case, no one here would even think of letting the same guys/gals go the more than one tourney in a single year. There are just too many good officials for that to even be reasonable.