In the February 16, 2022 issue of \u201cThe NFHS Voice,\u201d Dr. Karissa Niehoff, Chief Executive Officer of the National Federation of State High School Associations, stated nearly 50,000 sport\u2019s officials have quit since the 2018-19 academic year. Although these 50,000 represent officials across all high school sports, a fair amount of this total occurs in basketball. Closer to home, here in Iowa, both the Iowa High School Athletic Association and the Iowa High School Girl\u2019s Athletic Union consider basketball officiating shortages to be a serious concern.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
According to Niehoff\u2019s article, \u201cInterestingly, about the same number of individuals \u2013 between 50,000 and 60,000 \u2013 have expressed an interest in officiating the past four years through the NFHS\u2019 #BecomeAnOfficial Program<\/strong>, but the number of officials actually coming in the front door do not come close to matching those going out the back door.\u201d This seems to also be true in Iowa.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We just aren\u2019t attracting and keeping enough young officials.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So what do we do to reverse this trend?<\/p>\n\n\n\n There are at least six steps we need to take as officials to build a strong, successful pipeline to serve the needs of Iowa\u2019s and the nation\u2019s high schools.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The first step is to identify and attract young talent to try basketball officiating. Veteran officials could follow a recruiting plan whereby we meet with graduating seniors from boy\u2019s and girl\u2019s high school basketball program, and any other high schooler interested in officiating, to sign them up and onboard them into the basketball refereeing pipeline.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The second step is to pair these new officials up with veteran officials through an officiating mentor program. The Des Moines Officials Association started a mentoring program last year. I mentored two young referees this year, but I know more young basketball officials could benefit from being mentored by a vet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The third step is to create an effective evaluation system with the end goal to identify those referees ready to move to the next level of officiating. The evaluation team could be made up of the young official\u2019s mentor, sub-varsity assigners, other active referees, and representatives from officiating groups like the DMOA or the state associations. Each young referee should possess a plan for their continued development, whether they are working junior high, junior varsity, varsity, or beyond.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The fourth step is to form crews designed to elevate younger officials to the next level. A veteran official doesn\u2019t have to work their entire schedule with a crew of two other veteran officials. Instead, a veteran official (maybe the mentor) can team up with two or three young officials for the season. One of these young referees might be starting their first varsity schedule, one might be working a mixture of varsity and sub-varsity basketball. The other might be working strictly sub-varsity. The power of the 3+-member crew is that there is power in mixing and matching the crew\u2019s talents based upon the needs of the games assigned. Maybe one night the veteran official works with the sub-varsity official covering a junior high doubleheader (or tripleheader). Maybe the next night the veteran, the varsity beginner, and the referee with the split schedule work a varsity doubleheader with the sub-varsity official in the stands observing. Maybe the next night, the veteran official referees the girl\u2019s game with two others, and the varsity beginner referees the boy\u2019s game with another two.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Of course, there will be times when games demand two or three experienced referees to call the action. But my experience refereeing high school basketball in Texas, Vermont, and Iowa suggests these types of hotly contested games might take up 20% of the entire season schedule.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The fifth step is to have an aggressive plan to move those officials most talented to higher levels quickly. Too many young referees quit officiating because they don\u2019t see a pathway for them to move to the next level. True, talent is required to make that move, but our promotion system seems a bit dysfunctional when it comes to advancing talented officials quickly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The final step is for veteran officials, including myself, to move aside to free up regular season and playoff assignments to be available for young referees. Would I like to referee the Iowa state tournament final? Of course I would. But with this being my 45th<\/sup> year upcoming refereeing basketball at multiple levels, I now know my role in the sport is different from when I was trying to establish myself as a Division 1 college official.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We can\u2019t have it both ways folks. We can\u2019t complain about not having enough officials, while we are unwilling to do what is necessary to increase our numbers. Either we do the things necessary to build numbers in high school basketball officiating, or we hurt kids along the way. And the necessary steps are attracting young talent, pairing that young talent with veteran mentors, establishing an effective evaluation system, committing to the crew of 3+, developing an individual growth plan for each referee, and expecting veteran referees to share regular season and playoff assignments with younger, and sometimes more talented whistle-blowers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Kids like to play, and part of successful play is fair, consistent, and positive officiating.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And that\u2019s \u201cThe Primary Focus\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In the February 16, 2022 issue of \u201cThe NFHS Voice,\u201d Dr. Karissa Niehoff, Chief Executive Officer of the National Federation of State High School Associations, stated nearly 50,000 sport\u2019s officials have quit since the 2018-19 academic year. Although these 50,000 represent officials across all high school sports, a fair amount of this total occurs in… Read More »You Can’t Have it Both Ways<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":49,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"neve_meta_sidebar":"","neve_meta_container":"","neve_meta_enable_content_width":"","neve_meta_content_width":0,"neve_meta_title_alignment":"","neve_meta_author_avatar":"","neve_post_elements_order":"","neve_meta_disable_header":"","neve_meta_disable_footer":"","neve_meta_disable_title":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[14],"tags":[17,18],"class_list":["post-528","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-primary-focus","tag-basketball","tag-the-primary-focus"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/desmoinesofficials.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/528","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/desmoinesofficials.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/desmoinesofficials.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/desmoinesofficials.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/49"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/desmoinesofficials.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=528"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/desmoinesofficials.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/528\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":530,"href":"https:\/\/desmoinesofficials.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/528\/revisions\/530"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/desmoinesofficials.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=528"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/desmoinesofficials.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=528"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/desmoinesofficials.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=528"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}