HS Varsity Crew Sizes

[voiceoflg]

Originally Posted by JugglingReferee

Ontario: each officiating group assigns officials based on the number that they have. In my area, we are lucky to have a large enough membership to use 4 for regular season games, 5 for county playoffs, and 6 for county finals, sectional, regional, and provincial playoff games and finals. (7 is used only in CIS (equiv. to NCAA).)

However, we sometimes put 5 or 6 on RS games - but these additionally officials are not paid - they volunteer for the experience of another game, or to gain experience in crew sizes of greater than 4 officials.

Five for 11 man football is hard enough. Four for 12 man football?

[Reffing Rev.]

In 5 years I've been in 4 states...

Illinois - 5 officials all the way through, and yes, downstate we have plenty of officials to go to more. (I did see a 6-man crew work a tv game, and they were as sloppy as could be, I think they added a 6th since they were on tv and made up the mechanics)

Indiana - 5

Missouri - 5 officials regular season, districts, and state playoffs.

Nebraska - Outside of the Omaha-Lincoln areas 5 officials has just recently become the norm. In fact there are still a dozen or so crews working 4 officials on 8-man games. The state only allows 5 man crews to apply for playoffs. Here schools pay the crew, so its $300 for the crew whether you bring 4 or 7. Since I just moved here, I was #6 on our crew, and we worked 6-man in the old Illini-Badger NCAA d3 conference, but I wouldn't try to teach that to a crew of 5 guys who have only worked 5 for 3 years in a pregame. We're now wrestling with school in basketball, state wants to go to 3 and schools who have been paying $100 for 2 are only willing to pay $120 for 3.

Having worked 6 man I enjoyed the dead-ball help on the sidelines, and the over-the-top help. I worked both a deep wing and an umpire, as a deep wing you have to be a little slower and trust your umpire to kill the obvious short-hop in front of the player. Umpire, has to do what he is suposed to do anyway, he just has to be more diligent about it.

All that being said, I would rather have 10 well trained eyes, than 12 so-so trained eyes.

[waltjp]

New Jersey -

5 man crew for varsity. There's been some chatter about expanding this to 7 man for post season play.

3 or 4 for subvarsity, depending on how many the league or school is willing to pay.

[JugglingReferee]

Originally Posted by voiceoflg

Five for 11 man football is hard enough. Four for 12 man football?

Yes. Naturally, we do not see some things. But the number of times that a coach complains is very very minimal.

On a crew of 4, the limiting factor is when a newbie is on the crew. Sometimes, we have a senior guy as a volunteer 5th, working deep, and slightly favouring the newbie's (as HL) sideline. When I'm a U or R, I also favour the newbie's sideline.

In recent memory, I've had only 1 call that I saw that I didn't flag that I should have.