Advice for the new guy

[MNBlue]

Originally Posted by ASA/NYSSOBLUE

There is no clinic you must attend before working hs ball tmielke?? wow....our new people MUST attend a 5 session rules/mechanics clinic...plus a field evaluation...where is this?

however, good luck,and do us all proud!

In Minnesota, we have no state requirement for a clinic/evaluation in order to work HS Softball. With that said, however, in order to get assigned games, you must, with a few exceptions, be part of an association, since the associations are how games get assigned. The associtation level is where the requirements may/may not get set.

At the varsity level, we will only schedule umpires that we know are registered and we KNOW they are capable of handling themselves. There are various levels of competency, and the assignor will try to match team ability with umpire ablity.

The underclass level is completely different. ALL of our non-varsity games are one umpire and there are many times a 'warm body' or 'no body' is assigned to the game. Not fair to the underclass teams, but umpire shortages force us to do things we don't want to do.