NM’s dwindling pool of game officials is alarming
How bad is it? Schools being asked not to play on Fridays
The hypothetical, as extreme as it might sound, isn’t all that farfetched, given New Mexico’s current dire strait.
What would happen if, on a random Friday night, the state didn’t have enough officials to staff all the high school football games on the schedule?
In truth, that dark scenario is already in the process of being addressed.
As with most states, New Mexico continues to battle declining numbers when it comes to its pool of officials.
“We are still miserably low,” said Dana Pappas, the Commissioner of Officials for the New Mexico Activities Association.
It is so bad that the NMAA has been actively asking schools to move off of Friday night dates and play on Thursday nights or Saturday afternoons instead, in order that qualified officials can be assigned to everyone.
“This is the (biggest) crisis we’ve ever dealt with when it comes to football shortages,” said Dusty Young, the NMAA’s associate director and the organization’s point man for football.
So far, about two dozen games, through the middle of October, have been moved off Fridays, according to Pappas, and others are expected to be moved.
Two examples involving metro-area schools occur in Week 2. Highland at Valencia, and Bernalillo at Navajo Prep have already been shifted from Friday, Aug. 31, the start of Labor Day weekend, to Thursday, Aug. 30.
There are, Pappas said, 11 games currently scheduled on that Thursday night. Even the busiest of Thursdays typically feature a maximum of five varsity games in the entire state, including two or three games at Albuquerque’s three public high school stadiums.
“Unheard of (to have 11),” Pappas said.
But these types of voluntary moves are, in a roundabout way, almost mandatory.
As of Wednesday, Pappas said New Mexico had a pool of about 300 officials, down 40 or so from last year.
“We are definitely in the same situation we’ve been in (for a number of years),” Pappas said, talking about this ongoing shortage.
But, Pappas added, she expects a bump with some registrations on or around Labor Day. The central region, which includes Albuquerque, is the largest of the five regions with about 95 officials.
Every week, the central region ships numerous crews to various other cities and towns to get prep football games staffed.
Football officials are paid $65 for a varsity game, $46 for a subvarsity game and $32 for a middle school game.
A crew of five officials from Albuquerque that works a game in Roswell, for example, would travel together. The compensation is 40.5 cents per mile for the driver. The other four officials in the vehicle receive a $10 rider’s fee, and each official gets a food per diem of $10$15, depending on the length of the trip.
The host school, or the host district, is responsible for paying the fees of a traveling crew.
For some schools, there is a real financial incentive to moving off a certain Friday night, Pappas said.
“Some schools are getting to the point, they don’t want to pay, or can’t afford to pay, the mileage for an Albuquerque crew when they can get a local crew,” she said. “They have a better chance of getting a nearer crew if they move the game off of Friday night.”
More and more games are also being moved to neutral (re: centrally located) sites, Pappas said, citing a Questa-Cloudcroft game during the regular season that is scheduled to be played in Estancia.
Young said the NMAA remains hopeful that a worst-case scenario doesn’t unfold. He said there would be many factors involved in determining which games to get officiated if there were not enough on a given night.
“We’d look at it case by case,” he said. “Hopefully we don’t encounter that situation.”
NOTE: The “Battlefields2Ballfields” promotion initiated this summer by the NMAA has drawn in six veterans who will receive scholarships as they join up. And the NMAA continues to try and find other avenues to recruit veterans.