High school PA announcer gives it back to fans/parents concerning refs

Ceasar

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Oct 7, 2021
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"The little money"?

Just talked with a guy who umps baseball, who also has a kid on my younger son's travel baseball team. I think he told me this year, for rec ball in his rinky dink town, 2-person crews are getting $80 each and a 1-person job is $125 or 135 per game. Maybe it's different elsewhere, but that's a good chunk of change to stand around umping 10 year old awful rec baseball.
Yes, baseball umps can do pretty well. I believe in central PA now for HS baseball, they get $75 per game. That is not too shabby. And it makes it more concerning that, at this rate, they cannot attract more people to do the job. As Tom pointed out some of this is the result of the games starting after school when many people are still at work.
 

CDLionFL

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Oct 25, 2021
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"The little money"?

Just talked with a guy who umps baseball, who also has a kid on my younger son's travel baseball team. I think he told me this year, for rec ball in his rinky dink town, 2-person crews are getting $80 each and a 1-person job is $125 or 135 per game. Maybe it's different elsewhere, but that's a good chunk of change to stand around umping 10 year old awful rec baseball.
Oh yeah, that's really good for rec league and for 2-man, that's nearly what we get for a HS game here. A lot of it is budget related and what leagues are capable of spending. I'm fortunate that when I have worked youth league games, it's contracted through my local HS umpiring association and we've negotiated pretty decent rates. But at the same time, I've worked AAU summer basketball and it's peanuts compared to what we get in a HS season (often have to do 3 games to match what we'd get for 1 HS game in season).
 

Lion84

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I get it that there are a lot of examples of behavior that is inappropriate. But you can't expect parents to just sit quietly and watch referees continually make mistakes and bad calls. High school, middle school, recreation officials etc. do make a lot of bad calls.
I guess you could always have the parents get together and take up a fund to pay for better refs and then they may have less to complain about.
 
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1995PSUGrad

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I guess you could always have the parents get together and take up a fund to pay for better refs and then they may have less to complain about.
It's not the parents' responsibility to provide quality referees.
 

Ludd

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I dad coached lax 10-12yo s for 5 years as my sons passed thru. I always said the same thing, “your kids are not going to Duke for free so chill”
When I coached basketball I got griped at by a mom who said I was hurting her son’s chance of a scholarship because he wasn’t playing enough and he really wanted to go to Duke….the kid was in seventh grade and was the second smallest kid on the team. He ended up hanging up basketball in the ninth grade because he wasn’t very good. It made me chuckle at the time.
 

Ludd

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I get it that there are a lot of examples of behavior that is inappropriate. But you can't expect parents to just sit quietly and watch referees continually make mistakes and bad calls. High school, middle school, recreation officials etc. do make a lot of bad calls.
I don’t mind bad calls or missed calls, but there is definite “home cooking” by some officials at the high school and middle school level. Refs are usually local and they have certain feelings about some schools or coaches. We had one ref when I coached basketball that didn’t make a call in our favor for two years (he had a real problem with the prior coach and therefore had it out for the school I coached at). I knew the head of officiating so I said something to him one day and he came to one of our games, sat in the crowd and after that game that ref never did one of our games again.
 

Bkmtnittany1

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I don’t mind bad calls or missed calls, but there is definite “home cooking” by some officials at the high school and middle school level. Refs are usually local and they have certain feelings about some schools or coaches. We had one ref when I coached basketball that didn’t make a call in our favor for two years (he had a real problem with the prior coach and therefore had it out for the school I coached at). I knew the head of officiating so I said something to him one day and he came to one of our games, sat in the crowd and after that game that ref never did one of our games again.
Did you ever get the cousin of the opposing coach to ref one of your games? In a game where the winner would play another team for a league title? Welcome to my world…
 

Tom McAndrew

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Did you ever get the cousin of the opposing coach to ref one of your games? In a game where the winner would play another team for a league title? Welcome to my world…

That ref should know better. Pretty much any HS organization, and any sports organization, has a policy for refs that explicitly states that they should not accept any assignments where they are related to a member of one of the teams, have an affiliation with the school district of one of the teams, etc. It's a self-policing policy, but if you as a coach or AD are aware of a conflict like that, you should contact the league or the assignor, and indicate that said official should not be officiating games involving said team.
 

Tom McAndrew

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I don’t mind bad calls or missed calls, but there is definite “home cooking” by some officials at the high school and middle school level. Refs are usually local and they have certain feelings about some schools or coaches. We had one ref when I coached basketball that didn’t make a call in our favor for two years (he had a real problem with the prior coach and therefore had it out for the school I coached at). I knew the head of officiating so I said something to him one day and he came to one of our games, sat in the crowd and after that game that ref never did one of our games again.

there are always some outliers, but I think "home cooking" is pretty rare amongst established officials. Refs can get friendly with coaches over the years, but good refs call the same game regardless of what teams are playing.

FWIW, pretty much every HS organization I'm aware of has a policy where if a team/district feels a ref is doing a terrible job in their games, they can request that that official not be assigned for future contests involving that school. And pretty much every assignor will accommodate those requests, until a team/district starts making similar requests for many of the top refs in that assignor's pool, at which point they (the assignor) begin to think that the issue is not the ref, but the team/coach/district.
 
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Shadow99

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I've negotiated our officials contracts for more than 20 years and settle grievances as well (in our section, which is equivalent to a district in the PIAA). The NFHS has statistics, high school officials are leaving at an alarming rate. Coach, parent and fan abuse is the #1 issue. Players, coaches and officials are not perfect......
As a consequence contests are often worked with less than the required # of officials, cancelled and rescheduled for availability and at sub varsity levels played as scrimmages or not at all. People need to wake up.
Every state association has worked to get out the message of fan/parent behavior and sportsmanship. Yet, it falls on deaf ears.
Same here in MD. Lots of 3-5 man crews this year for Varsity games due to not having enough refs. As our asst AD, my job at FB games is to stay with the officials from the time they get out of their vehicles until they leave. I save parking spots in our back lot away from the normal crowd, escort them in to the officials room and then through the school on to the field or the pressbox for the timer. At halftime I feed them back in their room and escort them back out. After the game I get them and give them a drink for the ride home and escort them to their cars. We do this for two reasons, to try and avoid the fan/coach interaction with the officials and to try and treat them as well as possible to get them to come back. We play a few Thursday night games with a couple on Saturday too. Guys are actually more willing to do a HS game on Saturday than a youth league because those are even worse.

Basketball and baseball are in bad shape too but not as bad as field hockey, wrestling and soccer. Too many older guys who have done those jobs for lots of years and are just not physically able to do it anymore. Young people do not want to get in to officiating. They would rather be the problem than the solution.
For those citing a referee shortage, it sounds as if any game without the ideal # of officials would inherently lead to more missed calls (at no fault of the officials who ARE working) and even more backlash or inappropriate behavior, thereby ironically feeding into the cycle despite the best efforts of those who did attempt to staff the game...
 

Bison13

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For those citing a referee shortage, it sounds as if any game without the ideal # of officials would inherently lead to more missed calls (at no fault of the officials who ARE working) and even more backlash or inappropriate behavior, thereby ironically feeding into the cycle despite the best efforts of those who did attempt to staff the game...
It is a bad cycle. Especially when so many parents think they are entitled to getting in free but we have to charge them $5 each to come so that we can pay the refs a bit extra and the extra staff needed for security. Many of them say that since they had to pay they are able to say whatever they want to whoever they want.
 

Psu00

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Here’s the PIAA link for anyone interested in becoming an official.

A quick scan of the site and I think I’m beginning to understand why less people are signing up to be officials. You need:

-FBI clearance Act 114- ($25.25)
-PA state police Act 34- ($22)
-DHS clearance Act 151- ($13)

Not that people would fail the clearances- it’s just a pain to set them up, complete the paperwork, go get fingerprinted like a criminal, and have to repeat the process every 5 years. On top of that-

-Gather clearances and submit to PIAA.
-Pay PIAA official dues- $40 (per sport officiated?), renewed yearly.
-Buy your own uniform(s). (The PIAA does give you a free patch if you pass their sport rules tests ;))

How much does a PIAA official make for a football or basketball game?


 
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Tom McAndrew

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For those citing a referee shortage, it sounds as if any game without the ideal # of officials would inherently lead to more missed calls (at no fault of the officials who ARE working) and even more backlash or inappropriate behavior, thereby ironically feeding into the cycle despite the best efforts of those who did attempt to staff the game...

part of the problem with a thread like this is that it is so broad, in terms of coving HS, youth, MS, and at all different levels, as well as covering many different states, leagues, etc.

I can only speak for how things work in HS sports in Pennsylvania. In PA, for HS varsity, games/matches are not played without the required number of officials. It's in the rules. If a ref does not show up due to traffic, the game is delayed. If they get sick or in an accident, they try to bump a ref up from a corresponding JV contest, or get an emergency replacement that's free, so that the required number are there. If they can't get to the required number, then the contest can not take place, and has to be rescheduled.

In JV and MS, there are no such requirements. Basically, the assignors do everything they can to staff the varsity contests. Once they meet those numbers, then they try to fully staff the JV contests. However, if they are short officials, then they will understaff the JV match. The next level is 9th grade and/or JV-B, where again, they try to staff them but it's not uncommon for them to be officiated with less than the ideal number of officials. And then there is MS, which are often officiated by the most inexperienced officials, or the older officials that can no longer move well. The assignors do their best to staff those contests, but depending on how busy the schedule is for V, JV, JV-B/9th that day, there are times where there are not enough officials to go around, and the MS coaches may need to officiate the contest.

Youth sports bring in all types of different variables. There isn't as much of a set hierarchy, though the most competitive leagues generally are fully staffed, while the less competitive leagues, or the younger age groups, often get understaffed with officials, because there just are no available officials.
 
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Moogy

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For those citing a referee shortage, it sounds as if any game without the ideal # of officials would inherently lead to more missed calls (at no fault of the officials who ARE working) and even more backlash or inappropriate behavior, thereby ironically feeding into the cycle despite the best efforts of those who did attempt to staff the game...

Yup. At a travel baseball game last year, we were stuck with one ump (other guy expected, but was just a no show and we're not going to have the kids not play), calling the game behind the plate. On steals/plays at 2nd, dude was basically guessing. Fans had better vantage points, as he was having to worry about calling the pitch, then getting up and seeing around the catcher, pitcher, the 2 fielders converging and the runner ... with a cloud of dust to muck stuff up. He really blew some calls (against us, we were the visiting team), and one parent on our squad was chirping him (happened to be the dad of the catcher, so he was more sensitive to those types of plays) ... but a few of us who knew better were telling the dude to calm down, and reassuring the ump we had his back. We actually lost one of the games of the doubleheader directly as a result of one of those blown calls but ... whaddya gonna do?
 
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Tom McAndrew

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Here’s the PIAA link for anyone interested in becoming an official.

A quick scan of the site and I think I’m beginning to understand why less people are signing up to be officials. You need:

-FBI clearance Act 114- ($25.25)
-PA state police Act 34- ($22)
-DHS clearance Act 151- $13)

Not that people would fail the clearances- it’s just a pain to set them up, complete the paperwork, go get fingerprinted like a criminal, and have to repeat the process every 5 years. On top of that-

-Gather clearances and submit to PIAA.
-Pay PIAA official dues- $40 (per sport officiated?), renewed yearly.
-Buy your own uniform(s). (The PIAA does give you a free patch if you pass their sport rules tests ;))

How much does a PIAA official make for a football or basketball game?

to answer some of the questions you raised:

- it is $40 per year, per sport (so $80 if you ref 2 sports, and $120 if you ref 3 sports)
- there is no registration fee the 1st year you ref. There is a charge to take the test, and that is your 1st year registration fee
- officials are independent contractors, and as such are responsible to purchase all of their uniforms and equipment. It's a business expense against the fees you make for officiating
- you missed a charge. Once you pass the PIAA test for a sport, the PIAA sends you a letter, and you then have @ 2 weeks to sign up with a local chapter of refs for that sport. Each chapter has yearly dues. There isn't a set fee (depends on whether they have to rent a room to meet in, whether or not they decide to purchase insurance at a group rate (all refs need insurance; it's cheaper to buy it as part of a chapter), etc.). You have to join a chapter for each sport you officiate
- Fees are not standard. Each league negotiates a rate with the local assignor. So officials may get $X for a game in ABC league on Monday, and $X-3 for an identical contest in DEF league on Tuesday, and $X+5 for an identical contest in GHI league on Wednesday. The fees vary all over the Commonwealth. You get less for a JV contest, then even less for a JV-B/9th grade contest, and even less for a MS contest
- another fee: if you want to be eligible for consideration for the State Playoffs/State Championship, you have to attend the PIAA convention once every 5 years. That takes place in Harrisburg the 1st weekend (a Friday & Saturday) in August. So unless you live in the Harrisburg area, in addition to the convention fee (around $75, I think), you also have to get a hotel room, and also give up a weekend of the summer
 
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Psu00

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to answer some of the questions you raised:

- it is $40 per year, per sport (so $80 if you ref 2 sports, and $120 if you ref 3 sports)
- there is no registration fee the 1st year you ref. There is a charge to take the test, and that is your 1st year registration fee
- officials are independent contractors, and as such are responsible to purchase all of their uniforms and equipment. It's a business expense against the fees you make for officiating
- you missed a charge. Once you pass the PIAA test for a sport, the PIAA sends you a letter, and you then have @ 2 weeks to sign up with a local chapter of refs for that sport. Each chapter has yearly dues. There isn't a set fee (depends on whether they have to rent a room to meet in, whether or not they decide to purchase insurance at a group rate (all refs need insurance; it's cheaper to buy it as part of a chapter), etc.). You have to join a chapter for each sport you officiate
- Fees are not standard. Each league negotiates a rate with the local assignor. So officials may get $X for a game in ABC league on Monday, and $X-3 for an identical contest in DEF league on Tuesday, and $X+5 for an identical contest in GHI league on Wednesday. The fees vary all over the Commonwealth. You get less for a JV contest, then even less for a JV-B/9th grade contest, and even less for a MS contest
- another fee: if you want to be eligible for consideration for the State Playoffs/State Championship, you have to attend the PIAA convention once every 5 years. That takes place in Harrisburg the 1st weekend (a Friday & Saturday) in August. So unless you live in the Harrisburg area, in addition to the convention fee (around $75, I think), you also have to get a hotel room, and also give up a weekend of the summer
Thanks. So there’s also the local chapter fee, buying insurance, and the option of the state convention every 5 years.

I realize there are differences in fees per location but can you ballpark it for football and basketball for the Philly or Harrisburg areas?
 

CDLionFL

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there are always some outliers, but I think "home cooking" is pretty rare amongst established officials. Refs can get friendly with coaches over the years, but good refs call the same game regardless of what teams are playing.

FWIW, pretty much every HS organization I'm aware of has a policy where if a team/district feels a ref is doing a terrible job in their games, they can request that that official not be assigned for future contests involving that school. And pretty much every assignor will accommodate those requests, until a team/district starts making similar requests for many of the top refs in that assignor's pool, at which point they (the assignor) begin to think that the issue is not the ref, but the team/coach/district.
We have the same thing here. Coaches and AD's have access to who is doing their games well in advance and can scratch officials who they've had issues with. I know I was scratched from one school a few years ago. It's probably good they did that because I wasn't planning on going back there anyway after the coach nearly chased me into the parking lot after a game.

On this topic, Bob Ryan did his Facetime soliloquy on Around the Horn about the dearth of youth and HS sports officials and he was railing about the attitudes of people that go to the games and act the way they do.
 

Ludd

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there are always some outliers, but I think "home cooking" is pretty rare amongst established officials. Refs can get friendly with coaches over the years, but good refs call the same game regardless of what teams are playing.

FWIW, pretty much every HS organization I'm aware of has a policy where if a team/district feels a ref is doing a terrible job in their games, they can request that that official not be assigned for future contests involving that school. And pretty much every assignor will accommodate those requests, until a team/district starts making similar requests for many of the top refs in that assignor's pool, at which point they (the assignor) begin to think that the issue is not the ref, but the team/coach/district.
My situation was middle school and not high school and you don’t get real high quality officiating at that level. I always expected missed calls and bad calls and just accepted it as part of the game. I gave the official that hated us the benefit of the doubt for two years because I didn’t want to be one of those coaches. I finally couldn’t take it anymore.
 

1995PSUGrad

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I was a middle school baseball coach for a couple of years. One day it turned out that the umpire behind home plate was the father of one of my players. He called me over before the game and said that he was going to make sure no one thought he was helping our team. He literally called every pitch thrown to our guys a strike, and I mean literally every one. More than once a balled bounced before it got to home plate and he called it a strike. I tried to argue and he shut me down quickly. After a couple of innings, I told the team to swing at every pitch. We were a much better team than the opponent so we won easily, but I made sure he didn't call anymore of our games.
 
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