7 man
 

anyone else see 7 man crew for hs ball today on espn? wow, was this just for TV or are there parts of the country that actually use 7 on a regular basis?

I'm willing to bet they may have used 7 only because it was HS on TV.

while on a trip to the island of maui, hi last season. i witnessed the use of 7 man. that's the only thing they use there on the island of maui.

If that was the ESPN game between Elder and St. Thomas (FL), I was disappointed in a lot of the mechanics I saw. The umpire was starting 10-12 yards back on scrimmage plays and hardly moved on any play. The R struggled with most of his penalty announcements. They threw several penalty flags in the parts I watched but they all seemed correct. It's easy to criticize when watching others but I didn't get a good impression.

My thoughts exactly. I posted this on another site, but the game here in Kansas City was worked 5 man, or normal mechanics. I assume they left it that way for the very reason you mentioned- many times when you work with more and the officials aren't used to it, the outcome is usually poor. I hate to take about a crew because it's easy to comment from sitting on the lazy boy, but there were many occassions were the mechanics went bad, especially with some of the deep wings. The announcements were poor at best.

I didn't see an actual game using it, but I heard one or more of the games here in Texas that were interstate games used 7 officials. TASO (Texas state ref org) now has a 7 man manual and has approved the use of 7 man. I suspect it will be used in early season games like this for several years but won't be a part of varsity play for a while now. I know of some coaches who already want us go to 7 man, but I'm not sure their superintendents are ready to pay for it. I also don't think its going to appear for playoff games without first being used consistently in the regular season.

It also creates other problems. Since we work (primarily) in crews for large school games, we'd either have to go to 7 man crews (in whole or in part) or have crews pick up 2 extra guys either out of the "pool" or from other 5 man crews on games they work with 7. My solution would be to have guys that are "floaters." Technically, they'd be in the pool, but if we had enough games for them, they'd move around to different crews and the individual crews would decide where to put them.

We use 7 when possible, but at least 6 on every game here in my part of Virginia.

First two games this year were 7, but this week is a heavier night for the association so there will just be 6 of us.

Virginia has 11 associations and I don't know how many of us have the numbers to put 6 or 7 out there, but the Richmond Association has a mechanics manual for 5, 6, and 7, so I know there are two of us at least.

How is pay handled? Our schools pay for five officials in varsity games and four officials in lower levels. If they get more than that number, the pay is divided by the number of officials, so the school pays the same total.

We should never volunteer to take less money for more officials. It becomes an expectation, then. If they want 7, they should pay for 7, otherwise they get five.

The schools are charged a set amount per game by the association.

I don't even know what we get for a game. I think it's $65 for 6 and $57 for 7, or something like that. I don't even know. I don't do it for the money. I take a check at each association meeting that includes three weeks of game fees and a small amount of mileage and it's always a little different.

We have the option of telling the commissioner we do not want to work on a 7 man crew so we don't get an effective pay cut. I never have. Never even thought about it.

Honestly, I don't think any school is asking for 7. We use 7 in playoffs so it's important to use it in the regular season where possible so we know what we're doing come playoffs. Also, if we have 12 games, that's 12 more officials who get to work on Fridays. We're strong enough that we aren't just running poeple out there for the sake of putting them on games.