Shortage of officials forces schedule changes

Person chiefly responsible for coordinating schedules says officiating pool may continue to shrink

Tuesday was busier than usual for Steven Aragon.

The northeast region football assignor for the New Mexico Officials Association spent much of the day completing assignments of officiating crews for this weekend’s games. Given that he has just 24 officials to choose from, Aragon and Northern schools scrambled to make officials’ and teams’ schedules work.

Because of that, Capital’s game against Moriarty that was originally scheduled for Friday moved to 10 a.m. Saturday.

The Laguna Acoma-Santa Fe Indian School tilt went from Friday night to 1 p.m. Saturday.

Española Valley’s home game against Socorro is now set for 7 p.m. Thursday.

The Aspen Community School-St. Michael’s Middle School football game, scheduled for Wednesday, moved to Monday afternoon.

Meanwhile, a fourth game involving Pojoaque Valley traveling to Cuba has been canceled because of a water shortage at the host site.

Aragon called the dearth of officials a crisis.

“We have 24 officials in the northeast region, and we have 18 schools,” Aragon said.

Marc Ducharme, Santa Fe Public Schools athletic director, said Capital and Moriarty agreed to move their game to Saturday morning to accommodate volunteers. He said the morning start was done so volunteers who handle ticket sales, the chain gang and other game-day responsibilities could work around their schedules.

“I got to give kudos to the assignor,” Ducharme said. “He is Johnny on the spot. He makes good contact with us and is proactive when he sees stuff that might be a conflict and gets back to us.”

Capital head coach Joaquin Garcia said the two schools explored playing Thursday night, but he didn’t want to lose a day of practice.

“You just gotta take everything and make a positive out of it,” Garcia said. “It gives us another day to prepare, and I’d rather have an extra day to prepare and get our kids a little better. Now, 10 in the morning is kinda weird, but at least the kids are playing the game.”

While rescheduling games because of a lack of officials is not uncommon, this season has seen the shrinking officiating pool reach extreme lows. That was clear when a season-opening game between Albuquerque Manzano and Las Cruces Mayfield on Aug. 20 was delayed by more than an hour because a scheduling error resulted in no officiating crew getting assigned to it.

Aragon said that almost happened to him this week, as he did not have the Laguna Acoma-SFIS game on the list he received from an online program used to help assign games. He said an update to the software has caused issues with game schedules, which was what happened with the Laguna Acoma-SFIS game.

Aragon said it showed up on his list for Oct. 22.

In Northern New Mexico, the official shortage led West Las Vegas to move the two games it has played so far to a Thursday night. This week had the greatest amount of movement, as three games moved from their original Friday date.

Aragon said some of the struggles in recruiting and retaining officials stems from a lack of pay commensurate to the amount of time they allot for games, which includes travel. He added the recent trend of unruly fan behavior and vitriol officials face also played a factor in those shrinking numbers.

Exacerbating the issue is the fact many current officials are older and some are retiring because they can’t keep up with the speed of the game.

“If we don’t get creative and come up with some collective solutions — and it’s got to come from everybody: fans, officials, schools — it’s only going to get worse,” Aragon said.

One game that was not affected by the officials shortage but will not happen is Pojoaque Valley’s road game to Cuba on Friday. Elks head coach Pat Mares said Cuba officials informed him Tuesday afternoon a water shortage at the school had them concerned about hygiene issues for the players. He said the school is looking for alternate opponents for this weekend. He said it was disappointing, considering the sudden popularity of the football program.

Mares said he already had 10 more students come out for practice over the past two days.

“It’s unfortunate,” Mares said. “We’ll see what we can do about this week.”