Website
 

Here's one that all officials should join, and guess what? It's free! The name is Basketball Officials United, and it's the heartbeat to the officials in the New York City area.http://groups.aol.com/Bsktblloffcl

Re: Portland Site
 

We use the web to assign rec games and will probably move to using it for scholastic also. We use Internet Sports Official's Calendar & Scheduling (ISOCS) and it works pretty good. The URL is: http://www.isocs.com

Coach's point of view: I understand the need for password protection. I am part of a foundation that supports our high school. We are in the process of getting an alumni website on-line, and it will be protected.

BUT, speaking from experience, I hope you don't exclude coaches and fans entirely from your officiating sites. I know the relationship between coaches and refs can be antagonistic, to say the least, but this site has been very helpful for me. Its one of the few ways officials get to spread "their message".

Coaches
 

The only thing my site does is keep officials phone numbers and address away from coaches. We have the rest of the site available to all, including board members names and contact information. We are trying to avoid the 11:30pm Friday night phone call from a disgruntled coach, if you know what I mean. Eventually we will have our site send game assignments to those who are internet savy enough and want them via email. Are there any associations out there that send game assignments via the web yet?

I've been asking if we can get schedules stored in the password protected area that our members can access. That way, I figure that it would be easy for me to see who was calling the games at the local HS so I could go watch. Also, I could see where the official's that I admire were working and decide if I could get there to see them work.

Schedules
 

Another problem that I see coming up would be that there are some younger or less talented officials that do not get many games. If you post the schedule of games and a guy that gets one game sees another guy getting 10 games you may run into some conflicts. Do most associations have that information public for all refs to see?

At our association meetings we get the entire schedule for a two week period. On the schedule are all the games, names, etc... You can sit at home and do the math on who is getting what games and how many.

In general I think the schedule is pretty equally divided.

Ron Pilo
 

Ron I run the site http://www.braboa.org for the Baton Rouge area and I would like to put up your pregame conference/game management handout. I got the info from post: http://www.officialforum.com/thread/6462
Do you mind if I borrow your material to enhance our site?
Ben

Re: Schedules
 

You've hit the real issue. When I wrote our website, the first pass made all games visible to all members. After much discussion, it was decided (with my agreement) that it was only trouble waiting to happen. To few are a good enough judge of their own abilities when comparing themselves to others.

On the website, a member can see all of their own games plus whoever is working before/after them.

The full schedule is available in paper form at the meetings. If someone wants to compare schedules, they can do it, they just have to put out the effort.

If an official wants to know where a certain ref is working so they can watch, they are welcomed to call the commisioner or the ref directly and ask.