Quote:

Well along with the poor officiating, we are also short on officials. It's an endless cycle really until some one breaks it. Parents/Players who may be interested in officiating see/hear the game officials get belittled and fussed at which turns some away from wanting to do it which then leaves us with lesser quality to choose from. I will be going through this thread and reading all the systems people have suggested and see what ways they can be fit to our State. If no one else pushes something like this forward, the quality is going to keep getting worse. And if no one wants to do it, I'll do it. Good refs should get recognized for their good officiating and lesser quality refs should get critiqued, policed, and trained more.

Even from this, I may get chastised or told to shut up, but oh well. I see a severe issue and I am going to confront it.



I am going to assume this is High School.

1. There are too many games on the same night. Why everyone in the world in certain areas have to play on Friday night, for example, is beyond me. This, of all things, greatly limits the number of officials that can be assigned. Either you need to separate the girls season and boys season or schools need to start playing on other nights.

2. Your assessment system for referees is as only as good as the assessors. Coaches can not be assessors they have a bias, they have a stake in the game. You need people from the referee associations to go out and assess referees. People who are already certified to assess referees by taking the USSF assessors course is a good start.

3. The verbal referee abuse needs to stop, from coaches and spectators. Referees need to stop it with cards or game terminations, and AD's need to stop it by actually going to some of these games to see it first hand. Finally the league needs to start punishing these schools, but you will never get younger referees if it continues.

4. Assistant Referee pay needs to go up to at least 2/3 the pay of the Center Official. In a lot of places it is only half. Some people dont want to go out and run two lines, however, a good AR is worth his weight in Gold.