HELP WANTED
Could an officiating shortage sideline varsity high school sports games in Ohio?
Bob Spangler first noticed a problem four or five years ago.
For the past 35 years, he has worked as an assigner, allocating officials for local schools’ athletic events. But around 2016, Spangler began to see tangibly fewer officials available to work games.
“We started having less and less people who renewed, less and less people who were actually working,” he said.
Ask the Ohio High School Athletic Association, other assigners, conference commissioners or even the officials themselves, and practically everyone agrees officiating shortages are becoming more common across all sports at the amateur level.
Perhaps most concerning is not the magnitude of the problem, but the many different root causes for it, including spectator behavior, older officials retiring (and the COVID-19 pandemic pushing some out sooner than expected), fewer younger people who are interested and possible financial barriers to entry.
“The first thing people will notice, and it’s already happening in some cases, is that sub-varsity contests get canceled,” said Tim Stried, the director of communications for the OHSAA.
In the 2010-2011 school year, the OHSAA had 16,629 officials. By the 2018-19 school year, the last year for which data was made available, that number was down to 14,060, a drop of 2,569.
As Spangler points out, what those numbers don’t capture is there are also registered officials who aren’t working games.
“There’s a lot of people in our local association who still have their license, but they haven’t worked a game for eight or 10 years, with me being a good example,” he said. “Just because there’s X number of officials, does not mean that all those people are working.”
In rural parts of the state, finding officials throughout the week is starting to become more of an issue, especially in volleyball, track and field, soccer, lacrosse and swimming and diving.
You may not notice these shortages in varsity games, but it’s because lower levels are impacted first.
“Let’s say hypothetically there’s three varsity volleyball matches, and there’s two junior high volleyball matches all scheduled, and there’s three officials that are available to work,” Stried said. “Those varsity matches are going to get covered first, but then the junior high matches would get canceled.”
Spangler said in his opinion, fan behavior is the biggest reason officials choose not to continue.
In fact, Spangler himself admits that he quit officiating in 2005 in part because he was getting older and was “sick of getting yelled at.”
While he joked that he’s repressed most memories from bad fan interactions, the worst incident Spangler could think of that he experienced firsthand was after working a tightly contested varsity football game that went into overtime.
“The police come up and say, ‘Hey, if you guys want to get out of here, you better come now,’ ” he said.
Two years ago, Karissa Niehoff, the executive director
of the NFHS, and Jerry Snodgrass, then the executive director of the OHSAA, penned an open letter titled “Dear Mom and Dad: Cool it,” that urged fans to cheer but requested they avoid verbally criticizing officials. The letter cited a poll from the National Association of Sports Officials that found “more than 75 percent of all high school officials say ‘adult behavior’ is the primary reason they quit.”
The treatment can be tough for varsity contests in which the stakes are higher, but some say it’s even worse with games involving younger competitors.
Bob Sutyak has officiated high school football for the past 28 years and also officiated college games for 11 seasons. The youth games he still officiates occasionally are where Sutyak said he hears the most from spectators.
“I’m just amazed at the amount of disagreement I get from people that are literally like 10 feet away from me just yelling in my ear,” he said. “And I’m doing 8-, 9-, 10-year-old kids’ games.”
Nationally, the average age of officials keeps rising; it currently stands at 53, according to the NFHS. In Ohio, the average age was slightly lower at 50 in 2018, the last year for which data was made available.
The three sports with the oldest average ages for officials were also the three sports that have notable shortages: track and field (60), volleyball (57) and swimming and diving (57).
The age of officials was of special concern the past year and a half.
“We had a few people who opted out last year because of COVID,” said Suburban League Conference Commissioner Keith Walker. “I’d say 75% of those that gave it up last year because of COVID have come back. But still, we can’t afford a 25% drop-off like we have.”
Walker is one of the first to say the solution to combating these shortages is more younger people taking up officiating.
Of course, that’s easier said than done.
Alex Krieg is an incoming freshman at Miami University and has officiated baseball and softball for five years in northeast Ohio. He’s also entering his third year of officiating high school football.
As someone who battled injuries throughout his own playing career, Krieg has found a natural extension for his love of athletics through officiating.
He’s tried for the past few years to get friends to join him.
“I’ll ask them if they want to do it and they’ll be like, ‘I’d love to, I just don’t want to get yelled at,’ ” he said. “And I mean, I don’t blame them.”
Several officials mentioned the possible financial barriers of entry for newer and younger officials.
“There’s a fee of about $100,” Sutyak said. “And then when you become a football official, I just got it in the mail from one of the people that sell us equipment and gear, football’s a very expensive sport to outfit yourself in and they have a package that you can pay $270 and get all the gear you need to officiate football.
“So before a person even steps foot on a field, they’ve paid close to $400. So it might spook some people if they’re not really, totally sure they want to do it.”
Most people familiar with officiating are in agreement that creativity will be necessary to solve the shortage.
In the short term, that could mean spreading athletic events out if officiating shortages continue to worsen — for example, having more varsity high school football games on Saturday and Thursday as opposed to a mostly Friday night slate.
Financially, it could mean the need for more scholarships, like the ones provided by Battlefield to Ballfields, a nonprofit organization that offers scholarships to veterans interested in officiating.
Stried said one avenue the OHSAA is turning toward is social media posts that emphasize the benefits of officiating.
“People a lot of times they just think of either the downside, either criticism or unruly fans or a coach that’s upset, and that’s certainly a part of the game,” he said. “But all the benefits that go with it certainly are numerous, and so we’re trying to just emphasize here are the benefits and hopefully that will entice some people to give it a try.”