In general, even though officiating is most often an avocation, assume the same level of responsibility to your assignor as you would to your boss at your primary job. Assignors don’t like to be caught off guard by a coach or school calling to complain about something of which the assignor has no knowledge. When something occurs during a game that you know your assignor will have to address, be the first to notify the assignor. You simply cannot overestimate the value placed on those small considerations by assignors.
Officials who keep themselves on the same page with assignors are the ones who will generally get the assignments they desire. Communication with your assignor is perhaps the biggest key to staying in the assignor’s good graces. However, simply having an idea of what assignors do and the issues they face will be helpful to you in sympathizing with them. Understanding the headaches that game swapping create or the frustration phone calls from coaches or schools over official no-shows cause can help you to be a better “employee.”
Good assignors do their best to maintain a high level of communication and a general familiarity with officials. Pickett often attends officials’ training clinics and educational seminars to stay close to the officiating level of the game. Schedulers who lose touch with their officials make their jobs more difficult and create a gap between themselves and their officials. Officials want to work for assignors who they feel understand officiating and who have their fingers on the general pulse of current officiating issues and trends. The better your assignors are at maintaining that relationship, the easier their job will be.
Riiff recommends that new schedulers “learn the level of play, learn the expertise level of your officials, and schedule with both in mind.” He also suggests staying close to your officials to detect their levels of improvement and burnout to schedule correctly. Kelley’s advice to the new scheduler is simply, “seek advice from a veteran assignor, as there is no substitute for experience.” He calls assigning a “hands-on job, not suitable for a computer.”
Assignors play a vital role in the officiating profession. They are the market mechanism that functions between a schedule of games (supply) and a cast of officials (demand). While each level of competition has specific concerns, the ingredients that go into the composition of an official’s schedule and the general philosophy of assigning are similar throughout the profession.
Don’t be shy about asking your scheduler what his or her criteria are for composing a schedule. The more that officials and schedulers are able to understand each other’s roles and how the other thinks the more effective the scheduling process will flow, and the more close-knit a crew or organization will be.