I believe there are quite a few good referees who do not do high school because of the 2-man system. For 5 years I did not referee high school because of this. I have been doing high school now for 4 years but am seriously considering discontinuing it because I do not feel like I can do justice to the game in the 2-man system.

I felt some optimism last year when the referee assigner in our district began assigning 3 referees upon request. He notified the schools of this and several schools requested three referees for region games. About 3 of the regular season games I did last year had 3 referees, but the majority only had 2. This year it appears that the schools have not been requesting 3 referees even for region games. All of the games I have refereed this season have had only 2 referees.

I guess this is a catch-22 situation. Not enough referees to have a 3-man system because they don't want to referee in the 2-man system.

To me, another big reason why there are not enough referees to go around is that the games are scheduled primarily on 2 or 3 nights per week. If the games were spread out across Monday-Friday, perhaps there would be enough referees to go around. This is especially true for referees whose sons or daughters play in high school. When my daughter was still playing, I was not available to referee on the nights when I was needed the most because I was sitting in the stands.

Last edited by Coach P; 04/06/07 12:31 PM.