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Referee Assignor Information
This entry was posted on 10/10/2007 7:23 AM and is filed under Clubwide.
Date: Tue, 9 Oct 2007 21:11:30 -0700 From: snyuan@sbcglobal.net Subject: refs To: kathy_mullin@hotmail.com
hi kathy, can you call me regarding the ref situation? I am willing to help out, and may have a couple solutions, but am confused as to the deal we have with steve jablow, and what is up with us finding our own refs, but then paying him for not finding refs?, or paying him for giving him the refs we found? I have a certified young man who is looking for center ref positions, and would be happy to fill in the open spots we keep having at dupage river park, but I would not "give" him to steve J, and would not think it would be fair to pay steveJ for having us doing all this ref coordination. My home phone is 630548-2721 and cell is 630-373-2721. thanks for your help, btw, he is doing our game for this monday. jaguars.
steve yuan
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Hi Steve--
Well I knew eventually that someone would hit their frustration level with the ref situation, and I'd get one of these emails. I'm happy to answer your questions for you. I don't have you on a contact list for any of the teams, so I'm just curious which team you're affiliated with and in what capacity?
First of all, as a referee assignor, Steve has taken the assignor class with the IYSA. That, in and of itself, is not a big deal. What seems like a big deal to me is the database of referees that he has. I certainly don't know that many referees, and even the few I've met this season would not be able to cover all our club's games. As for our deal with Steve, we have agreed to pay him $6 per game for each center ref. If a ref signs up for a game and is subsequently a no-show, we do not pay for that game and receive another for free. Given that each team has 5 home games, this costs each team a maximum of $30 per season. Since we have had no-shows already this season, some teams are already down to $18. One of the unfortunate facts, for us, is that most of the refs in his database have a loyalty to a club and they're going to sign up for those games before any others. If it's a kid, he/she plays (or played in the past) for the club. If it's an adult, it's the club his kids play(ed) for. Unfortunately, as a newer club, we don't have this pool of people to draw from, and so our games are some of the last ones looked at. Of the rather large database of refs, none of them feel like they "belong" to us. Sandy Martinez has done a wonderful job of beginning to cultivate this group for us, but the sad truth is that we can't force them to sign up for games. Which brings me to my next point.
When we ask a referee to become an approved ref on refscheduler.net, we do not "give" him to Steve. Steve does not pick and choose what games get covered and/or put certain refs in for certain games. It is to the advantage of the referee to sign up on a website such as this if they want to work more. They then can see all the games available to them and sign up for whatever they want. The referees have a personal password and they are the only ones who can put themselves in for games. If we are able to cultivate a group of refs who are loyal to us and want to go in and sign up for all the Challenger games for an entire season, that would be great! We just don't have those people to fall back on yet. We have referred several refs to the website this fall, but unfortunately for us, they're still not signing up for our games (or anyone else's, for that matter). They're high school kids who are winding up their own seasons, and they're just not readily available. So, the long and the short of it is that the refs work as much as they want to work. They sign up for exactly what they feel like doing, and they usually pick games close to home. When a coach/team finds its own center ref, I have asked that the team mark on the game card "Game went uncovered by ref assignor. Found own ref, and paid at the field". This is then supposed to alert the NISL/IWSL that Steve shouldn't be paid for the game. Whether or not that works is a little out of my hands.
Having said all of that, I am doing my best to keep track of the games this season which went uncovered (not no-shows) and we found our own center refs. I am going to write a letter on behalf of the entire club and attempt to get those monies back from the NISL/IWSL. I have been faced with this before, and I have gotten absolutely no response. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't try.
Also, to clarify....I am not interested in "jumping ship" on Steve. We are far better off now than we were with our previous assignor, and Steve has been doing his very best to get these games covered. He has taken on other clubs who have left that assignor as well. The simple fact is that there is a critical shortage of referees.
Moving forward, we, as a club, have to start networking more and finding those people who would like to ref for us and only us. We need to find the park district certified refs and ask them to take the class to become IYSA certified. I am quite sure that every family in this club knows at least one person that they could refer. Even if it's just a friend of a friend, we should be able to grow our own group of referees who will choose our games before any others. Then they sign up on Steve's website, and he monitors from there. We have 13 teams, with somewhere between 175 & 200 families. Think about the possibilities... My opinion, whatever that's worth, is that (for now, anyway)we should continue to work with Steve because it's better than nothing.
I hope I answered all of your questions. If you have more, feel free to email me back.
Thanks!
Kathy
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