Where's the Gracious Professionalism?

[EricH]

Originally Posted by J-Blondie

I think it's possible they had a lack of experienced volunteers who were willing to referee. Reffing is a tough job, and I'm sure to most volunteers it's extremely intimidating to most people.

That said, the negativity against the refs this season isn't going to help volunteer numbers for reffing either, which is also a thing to consider.

I have to agree. I volunteered as a rookie ref, wound up on a 6-ref crew (who were experienced and had worked together before). Due to the ref layout (4 refs + head ref), one of us was always on break. But, that was Week 1.

By Week 4, some head refs, like the one for the competition I added to my reffing schedule, had figured out that more refs were needed, in addition to FIRST's adding two refs (1 on break and 1 at the truss). For that one, we threw all 8 of us on the field for elims--1 head ref, 2 refs focused on scoring, 1 ref focused on fouls, and 4 refs targeting both scoring and fouls. I saw a Week 6 event with a similar layout.

But here's the thing--after that Week 1 event, I saw a post indicating that one or more of the refs from my Week 1 crew were reconsidering reffing again. It's not an easy job to find volunteers for, it's even harder to find experienced volunteers... and given the amount of criticism they get, I wouldn't be surprised if some of them drop every year, particularly this year. I'll be back next year, probably...

But I do have a suggestion for any Volunteer Coordinators reading this. If you see someone complaining about the X position (ref, reset, judge, whoever), you have my full approval (not that it matters) if you rope them right into that position next year, or for an offseason. Just to let 'em have a taste of what it's actually like.