How do most state high school associations pick the two umpires used in games. Partners picked prior to season ? Partners listed on contracts ? Surprise, arrive at park and look for someone with the same shirt on ? Just curious..

I am affiliated with an association that handles all of the HS softball in the area. The association assignor pairs up the umpires according to their availability. I usually work with a half dozen different partners each year.

That's pretty much how it is here in central Pa, too. We do not have regular assigned partners and we work with umps from different chapters often, too.

Our chapter has 1 assignor.........for the most part everyone knows everyone else.......so it does not matter who your partner is. But our assignor always lets us know who we will be calling with ahead of time.

Joel

Same here...we get a contract at the beginning of the year with our partners AND positions assigned.....of course call outs, etc always happen, but you generally know who your partner is going to be before a game.....

We have a scheduler that does job by the month. New Blues
work scrimmages with vets, then when district play starts,
the vets do the crucial games especially in 4A/5A divisions.
In tournaments we use the more expreienced umps assigned
with rookies, second and third year guys. So far we really
have not had to worry about many, it still raining.

My high school schedule for next year will be sent to me sometime in June or early July. We have 1 guy who does all the assigning for the district. Anything that I pick up in addition to that is by way of rainout or cancellation/rescheduling.