League/Section Playoff games

[coach41]

Hi All,

I thought my 2005-2006 high school reffing season had ended on Valentine's Day when I worked a JV Boys Championship game.

Alas, I get a call this morning from a league assignor asking "Are you available tomorrow?". As it turned out, I was available but in my mind I was thinking "Uh, there aren't any JV games left and I know the league the assignor is calling about has their varsity semi-final games tomorrow".

Yes, I'm suddenly on a league semi-final girls playoff game. My best guess is that someone cancelled at the last moment and the majority of the veteran officials probably already had their schedules filled so it fell to others like me who weren't exactly at the top of the list.

I am curious if people could discuss how playoff games are doled out in their respectives leagues/states. I've heard that coaches get to "cross off" officials they didn't like or something. However, I have never really officially how the system works.

I was told that coaches from both teams tomorrow had to "approve me" working the game.

I appreciate any comments!

[JRutledge]

This is discussed several times over on this site. You might want to do a little search and you will find more information.

Just to overview what we do here is my state of Illinois. The Illinois High School Association handles all the assignments. There are not "coach approvals" or association picks. The sports administrator does the assigning for the entire state and all levels. They do use a "power rating" system that gives some independent data to help, but ultimately it is up to the sports administrator to make the final decisions. In our state we have 4 different tournaments:

Class A-Girls
Class AA--Girls
Class A--Boys
Class AA--Boys

Each tournament has their own State Final Weekend starting with the Girl's Class A (small schools) Tournament. The only way you are to work the State Final in any of the tournaments you have to start at the Regional level and go all the way to the State Finals. Also both Boy's and Girl's have their own sports administrator. There are some people that work both boy's and girl's playoffs, but it is unlikely that most will work both during the same year unless that official is only working the Regional level.

Peace

[coach41]

Actually, the search function on this site seems to have been disabled so it would have been a manual search, which I don't have time for.

[JRutledge]

Originally posted by coach41
Actually, the search function on this site seems to have been disabled so it would have been a manual search, which I don't have time for.

You can still do a Google search and you will find some information on past threads.

Peace