How does your state rank?

[Smitty]

Originally Posted by BigT

I had a friend who has been refereeing mostly rec ball and running a charter HS league. He moves to Texas and works one JV scrimmage and gets a Varsity schedule. Maybe that is how it can work in Texas.

You can't assume that all of Texas does the same thing just because of this one alleged situation. Each association (they call them chapters here) in the state is independent in how they assign and rank. Each one covers a certain geographic/district area. Some are very small and some are very big. The association I am a member of happens to be one of the best in the state (based on the state final assignments of the recent past) and every official is evaluated and ranked prior to the season. It's not a perfect system, but it's about as good as any other I've seen. With over 400 members, it's very difficult. The assignor makes it very clear that on any given night he will put the best available officials in the most important games. The word important can be based on different factors for different games.

[BigT]

Originally Posted by Smitty

You can't assume that all of Texas does the same thing just because of this one alleged situation. Each association (they call them chapters here) in the state is independent in how they assign and rank. Each one covers a certain geographic/district area. Some are very small and some are very big. The association I am a member of happens to be one of the best in the state (based on the state final assignments of the recent past) and every official is evaluated and ranked prior to the season. It's not a perfect system, but it's about as good as any other I've seen. With over 400 members, it's very difficult. The assignor makes it very clear that on any given night he will put the best available officials in the most important games. The word important can be based on different factors for different games.

Didnt mean to sound like this was how it worked for all of Texas. I thought it was kewl his ability could be evaluated so quickly and be given that kind of schedule.

Who ranks them? What are they evaluated on? What do you like and dislike about the system?

[Smitty]

Originally Posted by BigT

Who ranks them? What are they evaluated on? What do you like and dislike about the system?

There is an evaluation committee that consists of top tier officials from within the chapter. During camp, all the evaluators were there watching games (usually 2 per game) and they had a form they filled out for everyone with basic things they were looking for. We are evaluated on things like appearance, hustle, game management, getting plays right, attitude, etc. At halftime and after each game you would get feedback. All evaluations were looked at for each person. If you didn't go to camp, there were summer tourneys that were used for evaluations. We were all given plenty of opportunities to get evaluated - it's on us to ensure we get looked at.

Here's where it gets iffy - there are 2 people assigned to various groups of officials, based on the first letter of your last name. So A-E will have 2 specific evaluators, F-I will have two others, etc. These people will give out the final rank to their assigned officials. How they determine it is based on general guidelines that they decided upon. Officials in my chapter are not assigned a rank from 1 to 400 - it's not like that. We are all tiered as follows:

100 Can officiate as the crew chief at every level of play
200 Can officiate every level of play as the crew chief with exception of 5A/4A boys
300 Can officiate all levels of play - crew chief up to 3A boys/girls
400 Can officiate up to 3A boys girls - crew chief at the 1A/2A level
500 Can officiate up to 1A/2A level - cannot be a crew chief
600 Can officiate up to JV boys
700 Can officiate up to JV girls
800 Junior high only
900 New official - generally can only officiate 7th grade level with an experienced official
999 Has not been ranked

[BigT]

I would love a lot more states involved with this discussion. How does your state rank referees?