referee has family in high school game

[Adam]

It's up to the folks involved in scheduling. Personally, I would avoid such a game, but I live in a larger city where there are plenty of schools and plenty of officials. Smaller towns may not have the same luxuries.

[johnsonboys03]

I can say this...I did a game the other night were the brother of the head coach was my partner. The opposing coach also new it. My partner called a great game with complete unbias but the knowledge of this made the coach feel he was being "hommerd". It caused a lot of problems for me. The coach was constantly on me about being on the same page with my partner. So I guess what I'm saying is it's not easy and would probably avoid it if at all possible.

[Adam]

Originally Posted by johnsonboys03

I can say this...I did a game the other night were the brother of the head coach was my partner. The opposing coach also new it. My partner called a great game with complete unbias but the knowledge of this made the coach feel he was being "hommerd". It caused a lot of problems for me. The coach was constantly on me about being on the same page with my partner. So I guess what I'm saying is it's not easy and would probably avoid it if at all possible.

I'm not sure how much you took, but I certainly wouldn't put up with a coach insinuating he was getting cheated, even in this situation.

[jdw3018]

Originally Posted by Snaqwells

Smaller towns may not have the same luxuries.

This is a valid point in these situations. My dad still officiates "back home", which is the fairly unpopulated area of Northwest Kansas. He doesn't officiate varsity level games for our home town, but he does other games in the league and in the surrounding area.

If people in this area were to never work a game where a relative (niece/nephew, cousin, etc) played, there wouldn't be enough officials to go around. When I was playing I had cousins on several of the 10 league teams. When you combine that with the fact that my dad has been in that area all his life and that he often knows coaches, parents, and other players even better than these 'relatives' you can see that these issues are going to arise.

He has regular partners, and they typically do one or two games a year (just had one in a league tournament two weeks ago) where one of the coaches is a brother-in-law of one of his partners.

It's just the way it goes in some areas of the country. They're quite happy to just have some competent officials in that part of the state.

[Adam]

That's another good point. Often in these rural areas, families have obviously expanded over the years to where, like you note, cousins will be on teams from several schools in an area. That's why each official is generally left to make this decision on his/her own.