One man show
 

Fresh girls- partner didnt show and I went at it solo. It required me to work significantly harder to see what I could.

Anyway, at halftime AD came in to say good job. I asked him for my missing partners game check for my troubles. He hem-hawed a bit and I asked a little more firm the second time and he agreed.

Was I in the wrong?

On a side note I told the coaches I would call what I saw and if I didnt see who it went OOB on I would ask the players. If there wasnt an agreement I would go to the arrow and I needed honesty tonight.

Only had to go to the arrow once when the ball went oob tableside and coaches couldnt agree, players didnt want to trump coach. One coach says " so much for your honesty talk"
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Sometimes getting the other guys check can be a bit of an issue, at least in my area, since majority of the checks we get are written out before the game and the person presenting the checks arent always the person that has the check book.

Why should the school pay for two officials when they only get one?

Any additional money should come from the official who no showed -- or the association (if one does the assigning).

Exactly.

Each association probably has rules regarding payment for one official. It's likely more than the typical two-official fee, but most likely not the combined checks of two.

Loners, I would have taken the one check, and contacted my association to see what the rate is for flying solo. You could always be mailed the difference.

I wouldn't have asked for the second check.

I also wouldn't have worked the game solo. State association wouldn't want me to work it alone either.

Better to leave with your check and call your association than putting the school on the spot. As was said, it's not the school's fault your partner was AWOL.

For my H.S. games protocol is a fee and a half and I get that directly from the organization.

It depends. the policy could be on the state, conference, assignor, etc. level.

Best bet is to see what the policy is for your area and then proceed from there.

My local chapter, not sure about the state, allows for solo referee'ing for any matches except for Varsity. And if I remember correctly, it is automatically "both checks to the solo referee". but I could be wrong. Happened to me once in my first season, but the official showed up within the first quarter. He ended up going to the visitor's school, thinking that was where the game was. Luckily the two schools were only 15-20 minutes apart. He gave me like $10 or something for soloing the first few minutes.

But I agree, I wouldn't have asked or demanded for the second check. I would have simply emailed my assignor and told him the situation, and then have him take care of it from there, whether the school or the chapter gives me extra money for soloing.

Honestly, are we really in it for the money? ;)

Last year, I worked a D III game and one of my partner's didn't show. Our supervisor tried to get us fee and a half, but contract with conference said that
league would only pay for two of us as contract said three of us.....

Anyway we both got turnbacks later in the season..... for the extra work....

Next time contact your association.....last thing you wanna do is piss off AD and have
AD go to another association for officials...

Luckily, I've never had to go solo for a full scholastic game with my Association. When I first started, at the MS level, I had a P who was notoriously late. I started w/o him several times and reported it up.

I've done a few Rec Games solo (blech). I get 1.5 game fee for them.

Money (Pink Floyd) ...
 

Agree, let your assigner take care of it. Fee and a half is the procedure throughout the Land of Steady Habits.

Does your opinion change if this school assigns its own games? Asst principal/AD & coach. He keeps the checkbook in his pocket and I knew that.....

Probably not. I'm not one to ask for or demand money at the site. I would probably send an email to the AD the next day. Then decide if I'm ever going back there based on the response.

In the OP, the AD may already have decided if the official is going back.

Perhaps. But the guy worked solo and the AD told him he did a good job.

Could be they're scarce of bodies at the freshman level at that school.

I just find it unseemly to ask for or demand money on the spot. I've always gotten paid for a game, eventually. And a nice follow-up email the next day that suggests to the AD that it's the right thing to do to pay the official extra would probably go over better.

And I agree with the OP -- if the school is hiring directly and the OP stays and works solo, he should be paid extra.

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.

The OhioHSAA official's game contract does not cover the situation where the second official does not show. The MichiganHSAA official's game contract states that if the second official does not show the other officials gets both game fees.

My position is if I have to do the work of two officials I want two game fees. Of course that means I have to give my game fee check to Mark, Jr., every time we officiate together, :D.

MTD, Sr.

About 200. Maybe half of which do high school games. We also have tons of rep tournaments on weekends, some of which having 500 games.