HS Associations - Training Programs

[IowaMike]

Originally Posted by BillyMac

Just like a Supreme Court judge, or the pope. How do you avoid having eighty-five year old varsity officials?

I would imagine they don't avoid it. I've watched guys working varsity in my area who literally cannot run up and down the floor anymore. I would guess that in most parts of the country, like here, working varsity games can often have a lot more to do with who you know and are friends with than skill.

In my area there is no evaluation process. The local association I belong to is essentially worthless; they have one clinic in the summer that I would call subpar at best. There is no evaluation process and it wouldn't matter if they did because they don't get any games for their members. Conference assigners give you varsity games in the two big conferences here; one of them isn't even a basketball official and in most cases has never even watched guys work a game. He wouldn't know if they did a good job anyway since he knows nothing about working a basketball game. Most of the games go to the same guys every year, or his pals from baseball and football (sports he does work). I work plenty of varsity baseball games in this conference but my crew gets very few basketball games.

You can get varsity games directly through the school AD in some smaller schools and my crew does this. We also get varsity games from another smaller conference with an assigner; we have never met him and he has never seen us work. I also pick up varsity games in yet another conference from an assigner with a different crew of guys. How do you get games, or an in with these assigners? You know someone who is tight with them and they get you games. That is how I got games in the third conference. The smaller schools where the AD assigns his own games you simply contact them and ask for games. I get a lot of varsity basketball and baseball games this way. I think I'm a good official but even if I weren't it wouldn't matter. I would still get my games in certain conferences but not in others. I get plenty of varsity games and am satisfied, but where I am able to get games and where I am not has absolutely no rhyme or reason.

I wish we had a strong association with good training and evaluation. I think being evaluated regularly would make me a better official.