Ratings and Playoff Qualification

[Ed Hickland]

I am interested in hearing from other officials on how ratings are determined in your area. Also, how is playoff qualification determined.

Here is Suffolk County, Long Island, New York we work four man crews. Each individual official is rated by game by each coach using a number system for several catergories. The composite crew average determines the ranking for the eight playoff crews if they have work 5 out of 8 games together. For the playoffs a fifth official is added to each crew. That official is determined by individual ranking of the remaining officials.

Many of our members feel the rating by the coaches is unfair because: 1) coaches don't know the rules of the mechanics, 2) all coaches don't rate the same, therefore, an advantage to crews who work 'high raters', 3) we do not know what was right and what was wrong.


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Ed Hickland, CCP
[email protected]

[Larry Gonski]

Ed.... It is almost impossible to get a true evaluation from coaches. Here at my association in Long Beach, we have the same system where coaches rate the officials. One year, I had fifteen varsity games with two cards given out to coaches and only ten replied. Most of them were the losing teams with a gripe about mostly rules. I agree they should not have any say on who is good or bad. We also have three retired white hat officials who observe us. Each official is rated three times a year. All of our games are five-man with the championship games having alternates. All of our playoff games are given to crews that do well in ratings. Some of our members feel that playoff games are more political than by merit......Larry Gonski