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NASO devoted its entire national conference in Norfolk earlier this year to the subject of recruitment and retention in officiating. The news of a national shortage was presented at a session titled “Why Aren’t There Enough Refs?” during which NASO Public Relations Manager Bob Still unveiled the results of a nationwide survey of state high school association officiating leaders, the men and women largely responsible for registering and accrediting officials in every sport each state governs. They know the numbers better than anyone. The NFHS also presented findings from a separate survey it conducted to find out the reasons officials have for leaving the avocation.
There was a 100 percent response to the NASO survey; all 60 state association offices answered the survey. (There are 51 state associations, including the District of Columbia, as well as some larger states like California that are broken up into several state association sections). The news was grim.
In the first question on the NASO survey, “In general, does your state have an officials’ shortage?” an astounding 90 percent responded yes (54 out of the 60; only Connecticut, Idaho, Iowa, Massachusetts, Oklahoma and Wisconsin responded no).
Need by sport. The NASO survey then broke the question down among individual sports (see fig. 1-1). Of course, not every state governs every possible high school sport. That means a state association cannot comment on an officials’ shortage in a sport not offered in that state. All 60 govern basketball and football; 59 govern volleyball; 58 govern soccer, softball, and wrestling; and 57 govern baseball.
Of those seven sports, the survey revealed the sport in most need of officials is soccer, with 86 percent of the state associations that govern soccer indicating a need. Baseball was next at 79 percent, followed in order by wrestling (76 percent), volleyball (75 percent), softball (72 percent), football (68 percent) and basketball (63 percent).