I attended our district rules clinic today. I thought it was interesting how few people were there. In fact, they said that we, who were there, are the ones that they will watch come playoff time because we were serious enough to make the trip to the clinic. One thing they did say that was interesting. The Playoff selection people do drop in on games and you will never know that they were there. Use proper mechanics at all times because you never know who is watching the game. If you were suggested by your chapter as one of the top 15% from your chapter and you use improper mechanics, they will first of all scratch you from their list and second, they will want to know who is running the chapter and scratch the chapter from their list and not look at anyone else.

I like it.

It's all good in theory.

I wonder what reality is like.

I don't know but it was Bradley's chapter president who said it.

Massachusetts is small enough that we have a statewide clinic for officials and coaches. Officials who attend are put on a "preferred" list for postseason assignments. Unfortunately, the meeting is scheduled for the same day as one of our local board meetings, and if we miss that one, we get fined. My guess is that the state meeting will be poorly attended.

Chuck

My guess is your local board needs some schedule updating.

Maybe, mick. But my next guess :) is that even if there were no schedule conflict, very few officials from my board would go to the state meeting. There are a couple reasons for this.

1) Only varsity officials need to go, since only varsity officials can get postseason assignments. So only 55 or so out of the 130 officials on my board would even need to go. And some of those are college guys who really don't care about being "preferred" for playoff assignments. They already know that they're preferred.

2) There's a feeling that this is simply a political move by the state association to flex some muscle for no good reason. And to mandate that playoff assignments will be made based on attendance at the meeting makes a lot of officials angry. We already attend 5 or 6 mandatory meetings per season. Nobody's in a big rush to go to a duplicate.

3) If we don't go, what is the state really going to do? They have to use IAABO officials from our board for playoff games in our area. So there's no real incentive to go, unless you really really want to be on the "preferred" list.

Anyway, that's just a local thing. Now it's time for your next guess ;)

Chuck

Chuck,
I am guessing your local association should have someone attend to provide feedback. :)

mick

5-6 mandatory meeting from the state? Yikes!

Yes, I agree with you about that. I hope our local HS assignor will attend and bring the gist of the meeting to us.

We don't have 5 mandatory state meetings. They're our local board meetings.

Chuck

"My guess is your local board needs some schedule updating."