Pointing Mechanic

[Rich]

Originally Posted by BillyMac

For some reason, it's real easy around here to get a Division II, or Division III, women's schedule, and only slightly more difficult to get a men's Division III college schedule. I really have no idea why, I know nothing about the politics of college officiating, assigning etc.

We have college officials on our local high school board who aren't even full varsity high school officials. Some of them have what we call a split schedule, working both varsity, and junior varsity, high school games. That's how good some of them are. Maybe, in your part of the woods, all of the college guys are the top dogs in the high school ranks, but that certainly isn't true around here.

It speaks more, IMO, about the politics involved for an official to break into the varsity HS ranks in your area.

[BillyMac]

Originally Posted by Rich

It speaks more, IMO, about the politics involved for an official to break into the varsity HS ranks in your area.

It's very competitive, a lot of politics, but there have been some good signs lately. Our five year old mentoring program is starting to take hold. Over the past two seasons the coaches have voted a few young officials (less than ten years experience) into the state tournament. A few of the old veterans are grumbling about it, but the coaches go for quality over experience, and you probably can't fault them for that. It's nice to see deserving young officials move up the ladder without kissing political a*s, but rather, just based on the quality of their work.

Also, some of our (low level) college guys aren't really that good, they think that they are, using their college mechanics in a high school game, but they aren't. Many spend most of the pregame talking about their college assignments, and complaining about having to fill in their schedule with high school games. Some "forget" their high school jackets, or their high school jacket is "in the wash" and wear their college jacket in a high school game. Some don't take their responsibility of observing the junior varsity officials and show up a few minutes before their varsity game, or if they're a "split" officials (varsity and subvarsity) they don't stick around after their junior varsity game to observe the varsity officials. I guess that they figure that they don't need to follow the association rules because they're only in the high school association for the short haul. I'm sure that every high school association has a few of these guys as members.