Getting Games

By William R. Smith

(Reprinted With Written Permission From Referee Magazine) For Subscription Information Contact Referee Magazine, PO Box 161, Franksville, Wis. 53216; Phone (262) 632-8855; E-Mail: Referee@Referee.com

You know your ability is there. If only your assignor did, too. The best way you can help him notice you is to get to know him. Find out how his mind works by navigating the thought processes of a typical assignor.  

We tend to focus on officiating at its “frontline” level, simply watching officials and evaluating their performance. But assignors use those evaluations to assist them in the preparation of game schedules for the next season. If you want a good schedule, you must be familiar with how assignors think and what factors enter into the composition of such a schedule. With that in mind, let’s take a look at some of the strategies for assigning officials at various levels of competition in an effort to identify some key focus areas for both schedulers and officials.  

Who Gets The Games?

Philosophies for assigning games vary. But generally speaking there are four considerations with regard to individual officials that go into determining which officials get which games.

Availability
Obviously an assignor has to take into account which officials are available for dates on which there are games scheduled. That’s a fairly cut and dried aspect of scheduling. However, the bottom line is that the official who is available more often is more likely to get the most games. An official who has a good deal of availability has value to a scheduler — even if that official might not be the best or most experienced. Simply being amply available is a great way for a new, inexperienced official to break in and “stick around” while gaining experience and expertise. Do your best to anticipate when most games take place, and try to clear your calendar as much as possible to facilitate potential assignments.

Rating
Officials who receive the highest performance ratings will typically receive the most, and best, assignments. That is true at all levels of officiating. Your assignor may or may not be the actual person doing the performance reviewing, but rest assured that he or she will have access to that information. Teams, conferences and schools want to have the best officials working their games, and — whether valid or not — the “best” officials are determined by performance ratings, regardless of who computes them. Strive to hone your officiating and communication skills every assignment, so as to achieve and maintain the highest possible rating.

Rotation
Most assignors try to rotate assignments so that the same official does not see the same schools, coaches or teams too often in one season. Eunetta Pickett, a longtime scheduler of high school and college volleyball officials in Southern California, tries to rotate officials often in an effort to “give everyone a chance to get the experience needed to get better,” while at the same time not over-exposing an official to the same schools or teams. Some assignors will strategically schedule an official around a coach or team with which the official has had trouble in the past. However, most schedulers will try to avoid having to do that, and some will simply not retain an official whom they cannot comfortably schedule in any environment. Do what you can to ensure that you are not an “environment-specific” official.

Seniority
After the previous considerations, and with all else being equal, most assignors will tend to give games to the more experienced officials. Dale Kelley, men’s basketball assignor for numerous Division I college conferences, including the Big 12 and Conference USA, says that those officials earn games because of a continued devotion and effort to their associations and sports and an expertise that can only be acquired through experience. That concept is important for newer officials to understand. It can be frustrating, but it’s a common practice. Time solves the problem, and someday you will be that veteran official who gets the call over your less-experienced counterparts.  

Get The Big Games

Does scheduling strategy change when considering games that might be hotly contested or that have significant impact on standings — the “big” games? You bet it does, and it’s naïve to assume every game is equal. Schedulers often predict games that will fall into that category, and schedule officials accordingly.

Games that match elite teams, feature volatile personalities or are nationally televised get circled on the assignor’s calendar. Those contests are usually given to the officials whom the assignor considers to be the best. In that sense, the “rating” and “seniority” categories discussed in the previous section tend to become more important.

Kelley schedules all games for a season at one time, taking care to assign anticipated big games to those he deems have earned them. He takes scheduling one step further by only notifying officials of their schedules a little bit at a time. The distinction between scheduling and notification allows Kelley the peace of mind of having all of his games scheduled in advance, yet allows the flexibility to make changes to the schedule, should an unanticipated game suddenly become “big” as the season progresses.

Mike Riiff, president of Umps Are Us, an association of officials for several recreational sports in Southern California, likewise schedules his best officials to the best leagues. However, he takes care to see that his best officials also see an occasional assignment in a lower-caliber league. That, he says, helps the official to “keep his perspective” and work on focus during low-key contests.

The Deciding Factor

Officiating is a people profession. Schedulers will assign officials who they feel will be able to best represent the organization on the field or court. Given a similar level of experience and expertise among officials, often the factor that makes a difference in who gets an assignment is personality, considered two ways.

1. Dealing with Coaches and Schools

Officials who have a history of personality conflicts with coaches and teams get labeled as risky to schedule. In other words, the scheduler will have to weigh the risk of a conflict and the subsequent time and energy that must be devoted to such a problem.

Obviously, conflicts happen during contests, even to the best officials. The officials who rise to the top of the scheduling depth chart, though, are those whose skill at communication and conflict resolution serve to defuse problems, rather than escalate them. Don’t underestimate the importance of those officiating — and life — skills.

2. Interacting with Partners

Some officials work better than others with other officials. Personality conflicts happen within crews of officials, just as they do with teams. Hopefully, members of such a crew have a level of professionalism that prevents such a conflict from becoming a problem.

Riiff tries to be aware of chemistry among his officials. However, he expects nothing short of harmony, regardless of who is working with whom. Most assignors wish to have as few encumbrances as possible to their ability to schedule — and the official who just can’t seem to get along with anyone will certainly not be working long.

But assignors are aware of personality differences and, within reason, will schedule accordingly. Be flexible in your officiating philosophy, so as to enhance your ability to assimilate to varying styles of officiating that you might encounter in partners.

A Reliable Product

When you talk reliability, you are talking about more than simply making sure you always show up.

No-shows are rare at higher levels of officiating. They are more common, however, at the amateur league levels. Tolerance for officials who fail to show up for assignments is typically pretty low but, given the demand for officials in some recreational leagues, many assignors have no choice but to keep unreliable officials around. If you are one of those schedulers, a good way to combat a no-show problem is to institute a fee to the official for a no-show. The fee varies but is usually somewhere around the official’s fee for the assignment itself. That policy gives you a way to institute a penalty to officials without having to terminate them. Of course, if you have an abundance of officials, termination is often the best policy for the good of your reputation.

But reliability extends beyond simply showing up. For many assignors, reliability means keeping your scheduler informed. Pickett gives a lot of credibility, and assignments, to those officials who keep in contact with her. That includes notifying the scheduler of availability and schedule changes, attending meetings, informing assignors whenever there is a problem or incident at the game site and keeping schedulers apprised of any other general information that is important for them to have.

That level of communication is frequently lacking in many officials, whose schedules seem too busy to discuss officiating matters during non-officiating time. However, in most cases, a simple telephone call to keep your scheduler “in the loop” and informed about what is going on at the game site is all that’s needed. That small level of conscientiousness will go a long way toward keeping you at the top of your assignor’s preferred list.

Another bane of schedulers, especially at lower levels of officiating, is game swapping among officials. After a schedule is issued, officials will often trade games due to schedule conflicts or various other reasons. That creates a headache for the scheduler who has spent a significant amount of time doing strategic scheduling.

Kelley advocates a game-substitution policy that actively involves the assignor. He requires that all schedule-change requests come through him. While that creates additional work for him, retention of that strategic scheduling control is well worth the effort in his opinion. Assignors generally appreciate you clearing your calendar to the extent that game swapping is kept to a minimum. Officials who try to maximize their schedules by accepting too many games, then “dump” the least desirable assignments, devalue the work of schedulers and do a disservice to the profession. Everyone has unanticipated conflicts, but be responsible about how you arrange your schedule, or that schedule could suddenly have a lot of openings.

Understanding Each Other

In general, even though officiating is most often an avocation, assume the same level of responsibility to your assignor as you would to your boss at your primary job. Assignors don’t like to be caught off guard by a coach or school calling to complain about something of which the assignor has no knowledge. When something occurs during a game that you know your assignor will have to address, be the first to notify the assignor. You simply cannot overestimate the value placed on those small considerations by assignors.

Officials who keep themselves on the same page with assignors are the ones who will generally get the assignments they desire. Communication with your assignor is perhaps the biggest key to staying in the assignor’s good graces. However, simply having an idea of what assignors do and the issues they face will be helpful to you in sympathizing with them. Understanding the headaches that game swapping create or the frustration phone calls from coaches or schools over official no-shows cause can help you to be a better “employee.”

Good assignors do their best to maintain a high level of communication and a general familiarity with officials. Pickett often attends officials’ training clinics and educational seminars to stay close to the officiating level of the game. Schedulers who lose touch with their officials make their jobs more difficult and create a gap between themselves and their officials. Officials want to work for assignors who they feel understand officiating and who have their fingers on the general pulse of current officiating issues and trends. The better your assignors are at maintaining that relationship, the easier their job will be.

Riiff recommends that new schedulers “learn the level of play, learn the expertise level of your officials, and schedule with both in mind.” He also suggests staying close to your officials to detect their levels of improvement and burnout to schedule correctly. Kelley’s advice to the new scheduler is simply, “seek advice from a veteran assignor, as there is no substitute for experience.” He calls assigning a “hands-on job, not suitable for a computer.”

Assignors play a vital role in the officiating profession. They are the market mechanism that functions between a schedule of games (supply) and a cast of officials (demand). While each level of competition has specific concerns, the ingredients that go into the composition of an official’s schedule and the general philosophy of assigning are similar throughout the profession.

Don’t be shy about asking your scheduler what his or her criteria are for composing a schedule. The more that officials and schedulers are able to understand each other’s roles and how the other thinks the more effective the scheduling process will flow, and the more close-knit a crew or organization will be. (William R. Smith is the rules and officials training chair for the Southern California Municipal Athletic Federation. He’s from Hesperia, Calif., and has officiated softball, baseball, basketball and football for 17 years.)