The Main Thing?
 

If your local officials' association was charged with prioritizing one thing, one activity, one responsibility -- one most important thing on which to focus -- what would that be?

Easy Answer ...
 

Education. The education of new officials, and the continuing education of veteran officials.

Training.

Peace

Getting members to pay their dues for next year.

Not really possible since it is responsible for training/education, distributing assignments, collecting money from the schools, and passing it along to the officials. Leave out any one of those jobs and it breaks badly.

Training is suffering greatly where I live.

Is that supposed to be "the main thing" in your association?

Well, that's pretty easy. If we don't assign officials to games, we cease to function.

I guess I'm lost as to the point of this thread. We have a commissioner who assigns and negotiates contracts. We have an executive board that runs meetings and gets info out to its members. What's not done very well here locally is training, continuous improvement, of high school officials.

When you don't train, you put an increasingly inferior product on the floor. Where I live (I commute to my main HS board), the 2 local boards have a pretty sh!tty reputation for the products they're putting out. A local conference actually hired an out-of-town association to do its games this season.

So, to me, training needs to be the thing that is prioritized.

Ditto here.

In a utopian world, these would be perfect statements. In reality, at least where I work, they are just worthless sentiments. There are more games than there are competent officials, especially on Friday nights. A good percentage of officials care about getting better and doing things the right way. Unfortunately, there is also a high percentage of officials that do not care and will not get better no matter how much training is available to them, but they will still get games because there isn't another competent official to take their place. Assignors and associations are stuck with these guys and they know it. Conferences and leagues can switch assignors if they like. They might see some new guys or a different mix of guys, but it is inevitable they are going to still get guys that don't belong on a game. Making training a priority is a fruitless endeavor. It takes a lot of work by a select few, with very little tangible benefit for the group as a whole. In fact, the whole idea of having associations seems pointless. In my experience, I get more out of the interactions I have with the select group of officials, that have goals and aspirations similar to mine, than I ever have participating in any of the associations I have belonged to.

The association I commute to work for does a decent job with training, a very solid job on rules study, and has started using video. And not coincidentally, they were recruited by 2 separate conferences to bid for contracts. They said "no thanks" to one conference, and won the contract for the other.

They also have quite a few officials with whom I enjoy interacting. So I would not say it is fruitless to build an ambitious organization that knows how to do things right.

There is a local association I refuse to work for because their work ethic and professionalism is nowhere near my standards. One of our very esteemed forum members works for that group, and he is so heads-and-shoulders above every other member of that organization it is ridiculous.

I would disagree with this statement primarily, only because there are associations that are doing a better job in our area than others to train official. And there is a reason in basketball and even football where the State Final officials are coming from in our area of Northern Illinois. So training has worked with many associations. Are there still people working that you could make a case are not top notch? Sure, but that is always going to be the case in high school sports. But that still does not mean you cannot do things to help train your officials in your association. I know I belong to both Football and Basketball Associations that raised the level of training and it has helped many officials get to another level either in high school and college. And in each of those associations, you have people that will never do the work or "get it" not matter how much you teach and train. All you can do is put it in front of them and go from there.

Peace

There are givers and takers in this world. You, at least in the context of sports (don't know you well enough to make a broader claim), are a giver...wanting to help others whether they will realized the benefit or not. Others are takers, the ones who have no genuine interest in helping others improve and/or move up but are only/mostly interested in how any endeavor will help themselves. Like most places in life, more givers is a good thing. Takers, not so much.

Wow, that hurts! :p Didn't you just get an awesome observation from somebody on the board recently???

Assignment Commissioner ...
 

Same here. My local board has been out of the assigning "business" for as long as I've been a member of the board, well over thirty years. We hire an assignment commissioner who does all the assigning. He's our "go between" between the schools (athletic directors), and our members (officials). If we like the job he does, our executive committee rehires him for the next year, if not, it's "hit the road Jack" (his name's not really Jack), and we hire someone new. It's only a one year contract.

I was surprised it took 12 posts before the word "video" appeared. That would be my one thing; hire a videographer (or the commissioner) to film select games, then make X number of video review meetings per season mandatory for purposes of assignment currency. Or something like that. We need to encourage more video review. A few plays once per year at a clinic or camp isn't going to cut it. Start getting HS officials accustomed with breakdown and their percentages. When they notice that their NCI percentage is 60% when they think it's 90%, hopefully they ask, "why didn't I get that right," or "why wasn't I in position to see that play?"

My second item would be camaraderie. Getting the group together on a Friday night after games at a bar and grill goes a long way to building unity.

You're being optimistic. Many of them will disagree they got it wrong or were in the wrong spot.

Two associations I belong to have an elected commissioner.

Thank You
 

"The Main Thing is that the Main Thing is the Main Thing" in any local officials' association. That's the title of a presentation I've been asked to develop to give tomorrow. Your responses have helped me identify perspectives that I had not realized prior to asking. Thank you for your responses.