Years ago when I operated the local Catholic grade school program, I had a referee "demand" double pay for reffing the game -- or he would not referee the game. I instructed the site manager to pay the referee his requested double-pay (at that time, we had no official policy).

I never assigned that referee another game after that season. Further, we ended up creating a policy that formally stated the referee fee when a referee was forced to go solo was 150% of the normal rate.

This amount seems to be fair for all involved. As a soloist, you DEFINITELY have a much harder task -- calling every out of bounds situation, administering every throw-in, calling every foul, reporting every foul, administering every free throw, reporting every time out, etc., etc. At the same time, regardless how good you are, you CANNOT do the work of two officials. Therefore, the teams should not have to pay the full rate.

My recommendation to you would be to cut a check back to the school for 50% of your normal rate. This would likely be well-received by the school and AD (even if he was upset that you demanded the second check).

IMO, ALL CONTRACTS should have this detail spelled out -- even though virtually none of them do. I have done varsity SOCCER MATCHES solo in the past -- and only gotten my normal payment. I would have taken 150%, but did not demand it. But, since nothing was agreed to in the original contract, I was faced with the choice of:
1. Doing the game myself,
2. Sending all of the players (and coaches and parents) home without playing (I would have still gotten paid),
3. Demanding 150% or 200% pay to referee the game (which the AD likely would have done rather than sending everyone home without a game).

While I referee somewhat for the money (otherwise, I would leave the cash/check at each site after each game/match), I really enjoy what I am doing and like the exercise. Had I pursued option 2, I might never have gotten to referee in that conference again -- even though I absolutely had the right to choose that per OHSAA guidelines. Had I chosen option 3 with a 200% request, I may have gotten the same treatment.

I am confident that the AD would have gladly paid 150% if I would have asked -- without any negative ramifications. The game still would have gotten played AND he still would have spent less money than he had budgeted.

As an official assigned to referee that game, that really should be of no concern to you at that particular point in time. Your focus should be solely on "pre-gaming yourself" as to how you are going to go about working the game solo.

As many others have already stated, work the game and then contact your assignor regarding proper (additional) payment for working the game solo.

Ok you guys got me thinking I may have been too greedy. Didnt burn any bridges as he mailed me about a couple other dates but I dont want to come off as greedy either.

Appreciate the input guys, it gave me a different view

Agreed with other posters in that you should defer to your assignor/association rules regarding 1 man officiating game fees. Typically this is slightly higher than the 2-person fee but not 2 game checks.

The school should not have to pay for 2 officials if that is not the service that was provided.

This is why I like our state policy -- our hands are tied. We cannot start a HS game at any level with a solo official.

Agreed, but how many times are we willing to give them three officials for the price of two?

I would be more than willing to offer a 3-for-the-price-of-less-than-3 arrangement (2.5 perhaps) as a way to gradually move us to full-time 3-person, but I never offer to work 3-for-2 anymore.

The school needs to put some skin in the game or we'll do the best we can with two officials.

Ohio used to have that rule for soccer (may have even been an NFHS rule, not sure). I don't know that we ever had that rule in basketball. The only problem with your state's policy is when one team makes a long bus ride (in last case, the bus ride was over an hour and a half), a "no contest" situation is bad for all involved. At least the policy gets the official out of the middle.

So you are at work, and one of your co-workers is "sick." You are told that the project needs to be completed by the end of the day.

Are you asking for your co-workers pay for the day or are you just getting the work done?

Our association pays 1.5x for solo games.

I am glad we have an assignor who doles out the games. I'd hate to deal with the 220 schools we cover.

Gigantic ...
 

Wow. Boys, girls, varsity, junior varsity, freshman? We cover 70 schools and have about 325 officials. How many officials does your local board have? We also cover many middle school games, but not for every middle school in our geographic area.

It forces the school to find an official. I only have heard of about 2-3 games not played in the 11 years I've lived here. Rather than shrug and say, "We'll just go with one," they figure out how to get a second here.

The schools only assign non-conference games where I live. I only deal with the 60 or so within an hour drive and I usually pick up a few games with a mass email or two I send at the appropriate times.

Otherwise, I deal with about a dozen league/conference commissioners who assign conference play.

One advantage with this system is that no one assignor holds complete sway over me as in a central assignor system. If one gets mad and cuts a schedule (or eliminates it) from me, I have 11 others and I can take an extra game or two from those to cover the slack. I went 7 years without working one of the conferences here (in multiple sports) because of something that happened in a football game in 2004. I shrugged and moved on -- now that the assignor is retired and a new one is in place, I work the conference....when I'm available to do so.

No you weren't. You did absolutely the right thing.

At my 9-to-5 I'm not an independent contractor. Apples and oranges.

I'm tired of the all the "it's not the school's fault" mantra. It was also not loners fault the other official didn't show up.

This is where I like working through association assignors. We get paid double by the association for solo games and the "no-show" gets fined a game check. The fine is appeal-able.