Talking to coaches... Part II

[Jurassic Referee]

Originally posted by JRutledge
In the area I live, all the schools have separate locker rooms for officials. They might not be the best accomidations, but they work.

Maybe your association should try to convince or demand better accomidations. One day it will cause a problem and not having a locker room will be the cause.

You guys deserve better than that.

Peace

Exactly,Rut.Good point.A few years ago,our association had to do exactly what you said--send a letter out to all the schools and organizations that we cover,telling them to provide a private room for the officials.Worked for us.

[Hawks Coach]

These are lower level games - neither team has a locker room either. The league runs on a tight budget - rents a gym, that's it. You have no other area of the school (other than the public restrooms closest to the gym) and aren't allowed in other parts of the school. Considering the halftime is 3-5 minutes and the time between games runs about 5 minutes, it seems unnecessary to have some place for the officials to go. Coaches usually don't have time to be dealing with refs. And I don't think it has generally been a problem.

[dblref]

When we work rec games (and sometimes MS games), we don't have a separate place to go to between games. We usually wait behind the table. All of the HS have a separate space for us....although some of the spaces suck.

[Sven]

originally posted by Hawks Coach
I know when refs are in the gym between games in the MS leagues I am in, half the coaches will thank them for their time/effort.

Those coaches are the half that lost, right?

Sven

[JRutledge]

Originally posted by Hawks Coach
These are lower level games - neither team has a locker room either. The league runs on a tight budget - rents a gym, that's it. You have no other area of the school (other than the public restrooms closest to the gym) and aren't allowed in other parts of the school. Considering the halftime is 3-5 minutes and the time between games runs about 5 minutes, it seems unnecessary to have some place for the officials to go. Coaches usually don't have time to be dealing with refs. And I don't think it has generally been a problem.

Hawk,

You do not have to have an actual locker room to have a private place to get dressed. Officials need something to get them away from people that might want to confront them about calls and other things that happen in the game.

I have done varsity contests (this is usually when they spend the money on their budgets) and have gotten dressed in classrooms, teacher's lounges, spare rooms, office space, coaches offices and any other quite places they can put us. You need your own room and if they do not have one availible, make some place availible. You may not have a problem now, but when something happens that one time, you WILL have to consider it at that time. There are all kinds of liability issues you need to think of. And that one fan that attacks or a fight breaks out because you did not have this covered and you have to get lawyers involved to sette the matter, I bet then they will change that tune.

Finally, if a coach does not want to deal with a ref, then you better make someone in charge to deal with that. I know if it was individuals in my neck of the woods, you might find it hard to get officials without a place to go. Halftime is one thing, but after games is another all together. And you need to have some place private for them to go.

Something to think about.

Peace