Gender Wars....
 

Our Association has been instructed by the schools not to send female officials to do boys varsity contests. (Yes, males are allowed to work girls games).

Discuss....

Our association has several women who work boys games, at the highest level. Our association is also the first in Texas to have a female official work the boys state finals. She's damn good. Times are changing. Your association seems to be going the other way.

I hope the first thing your association does is send three women to work their next BV game. :rolleyes:

Agree.

Ridiculous. Is there any way that the state high school league can intervene?

Some of the top-rated officials in my state are females. We've had females work boys state championships before.

And I agree with the above posters.

I didn't realize that possession of specific genitalia was a requirement to officiate boys basketball.

Is this just a couple of schools, or is it an entire conference (or worse)?

Either way, that's seriously messed up...

Ask whomever told you this to put that request in writing and to identify the schools that are part of the request by name because you want to contact them directly. . request a meeting immediately to discuss because your association feels this is outrageous. you assign referees not men or women….

1. they probably won't do either. but the point is to let somebody on their end know this isn't going to go away.
2. if they list the schools, send it to each school board identified and ask them if this is truly the position of this district in 2014….
3. also mail it to local newspaper and tv station.

Schedule your season as you normally would. don't load them up with women but don't change for their benefit. if they turn woman away see number 3. good luck.

Just turn the request over to your local TV station. That should fix that.

Or, send 3 male officials from your rookie class...3 that really don't know what is going on yet. When they call to complain, tell them you had 3 highly qualified women that could have worked the game but they asked for men. :D

More Info Needed
 

A. Objectively speaking, how do the individual women of your association rank in terms of skill and ability in comparison to all officials?

B. Is it correct that your association assigns officials solely based on aptitude and merit?

Answers to these questions are significant for a worthwhile discussion. Otherwise the whole thing becomes nothing more than a politically correct exercise in feel-goodism.

Being instructed to do something and actually doing it are two different things.

In South Carolina, officials typically work a doubleheader (girls game followed by a boys game), so a request like that would not only be denied, but infeasible. Our state would say that if you don't want certain officials, put them on your mark-off list in Arbiter. But if you fill it up with females, then you're risking getting assigned some of the lower-tier males. It's really that simple.

I do like the suggestion of turning it over to the media.

Tell the schools to take a hike and welcome them to 1992.

If you want to have some real fun, have one of the female officials in your association contact an attorney. I'll bet the attorney would take this one for free, and it would be a very quick return.

There are so many options here.

Contact your local chapter of the ACLU. They'll love to take on this fight for you and probably at no charge.

All I can say is that it is very uncommon that any female works a boys basketball game at the varsity level. But on the flip side women get a lot of great opportunities and girls or NCAAW basketball usually faster than men at the same level of experience or opportunities. And it is not uncommon either that anyone that works a lot of girls do not get a lot of boys opportunities either in the regular season or post season. So I guess it would be hard here to complain of who you send to a game.

Peace

The VA head poobah for HS basketball is named Joyce!!