Looking to Get Started

[Welpe]

Greetings everyone, I've just recently found this forum and have been perusing some of the older threads on here.

A bit about me: I currently live on the Central Coast of California and am attending a Division I-AA Great West football school. I will be graduating in June and returning to the Bay Area. I have umpired baseball and softball for 10 years now and am looking to start officiating tackle football. I officiated a couple years of flag football here and that perked my interest in doing the real thing. I also played throughout high school and was also an assistant youth league coach for a couple of years.

I've found the contact information for a few associations in the San Francisco Bay Area. What I am wondering is what I should be looking for in a football association? There are many to choose from and other than location, I'm not really sure what I should be looking at. It seems most of them handle both youth and high school leaguess. Also, what level of football should I expect to start out in? I would assume youth leagues for the first couple of years but you know what they say about assumptions...

This seems like a great resource and I look forward to absorbing a whole lot of information. I would appreciate any advice you folks have to offer.

Cheers and thank you,

Monty