Vanishing Referees

After rain washed out St. Marys' varsity baseball tournament opener against Galion on May 18, St. Marys coach Adam Graves found himself in a bind.

The umpires assigned to his game already had a game lined up the next day, and with almost every school still playing, there were no other umpires free for the rescheduled tournament opener.

Graves got lucky: The Roughriders had a freshman game scheduled the same day, so Graves cancelled it and took the two umpires for his tournament game. The base umpire was in his first year officiating, had never done varsity before and made it clear before the game he felt he was in way over his head.

"He tried to back out around 3:30," Graves said. "But we got him out there, and luckily, it was a quick 1-0 game, no close plays or tough judgement calls. I found out later, what he was most worried about was calling balks, things like that."

Coldwater was less fortunate. The sectional opener between Allen East and Kenton was rained out, the rescheduled game was one of two that had only one umpire available, and the other game was chosen to get a two-man crew. With that matchup postponed again to Friday, the Cavaliers had to push their game against the winner back to Saturday.

Baseball is hardly the only sport feeling the pinch. In soccer, Ohio High School Athletic Association assigner Gary Mintchell has a roster of just under 100 referees to cover boys and girls junior varsity and varsity matches in the Western Buckeye League, West Ohio Soccer League, Putnam County League, one division of the Central Buckeye Conference and other individual schools.

While the numbers have stayed fairly steady, referees have been stretched over more schools and games in recent years. Right now, Mintchell said he still has 242 games for the upcoming season without a single referee scheduled. About two-thirds of them are varsity games.

"I have never come to the end of June with 242 games needing officials," Mintchell said. "Honestly, not sure what I'm going to do. I'll be contacting people every day for the next few months."

The OHSAA had 16,629 licensed officials across all sports for the 2010-2011 season. For 2020-2021, there were 13,585.

From 2019-2020 to 2020-2021, OHSAA lost 1,066 officials across all sports. Wrestling lost 14% of its officials during the pandemic alone.

Tim Stried, director of media relations at OHSAA, said the Northwest district seems to be doing better than most.

"Western and northwestern Ohio, high school sports are so important to those communities," he said. "It's just a part of the culture, and a lot of people feel the call to continue to be part of it and being part of officiating."

Yet more locally, the Midwest Buckeye Umpire Association based in Van Wert went from 57 baseball umpires in 2019 to 44 in 2022. The Miami and Erie Association based in St. Marys is down to 24.

Those two associations generally cover games from Paulding County to Darke County, and from the Indiana border east through Auglaize County.

Volleyball requires one Class 1 official per varsity match. The Lima association has 16 Class 1 officials, and associations in Celina and Van Wert have seven each.

Of the officials who are available, many are nearing retirement. The average age of officials in Ohio was 50 in 2020-2021 and knee and back issues routinely thin the ranks. With an older population of officials, few are willing to work five or six nights a week.

Officials willing to step up to the plate every night are already booked solid. Hall of Famer Steve Trout of Wapakoneta said he worked 135 to 150 matches this season, ranging from two or three games a week in basketball season to five or six games a week in volleyball and softball.

New Bremen's Ben Kramer, who officiates three sports, worked "a minimum" of five varsity basketball games a week. Todd Henkle, a retiring volleyball official from Rockford, worked three or four nights a week, with few area teams playing Wednesdays, Fridays or Sundays.

District 4 ACME Baseball Commissioner Toby Siefring moved the sectional and district tournaments to weekdays and abandoned the traditional July 4th weekend to avoid competing for umpires with the abundance of youth tournaments.

"Youth sports in general has become so prominent that there's so many more games, so it's also a supply-and-demand thing," he said. "We have so many more games, and some of these guys in some of the cities, youth tournaments are getting paid just as much for that so it's pulling people from every which way. And it's wearing on people. The competition at a U8 level is chasing some of these guys away that just did it for the enjoyment of it all."

With the shortage, those umpires often have more on their plates at each of those games. Graves' JV team played as many games with one umpire as two. Coldwater umpire Jason Miller worked three varsity baseball games solo in 2022, a game at Crestview and a Saturday doubleheader at Kalida, which he picked up the night before.

"I've been lucky where I haven't had to do too many games alone," said Jack Hemmelgarn, a Celina teacher who officiates baseball and basketball at the sub-varsity levels. "When I have, it's definitely not ideal. In baseball, basketball, you definitely need two guys out there to try to make all the right calls. Positioning-wise, as the lone guy, it's nearly impossible to put yourself in the right position for every call."

The WBL and the Midwest Athletic Conference have dodged postponements in their varsity league schedules so far. Both conferences look to schedule officials for games two years out whenever possible, and in football, officials are asked to hold the same weeks every year to maintain continuity.

Other conferences have had more trouble. Ryan Thompson, a baseball umpire from Rockford, got an email two weeks before the spring season from three schools that had 77 games unfilled.

Even if every game is assigned, weather-related postponements happen and officials may have to cancel at the last minute for myriad reasons.

Finding replacements has become nearly impossible, and "turnbacks" - when an official asks to cancel an assignment - have risen. In the MAC, there were 34 turnbacks in 2016-2017 and 120 in 2021-2022.

"In the situation that we're in now, it's more imperative than ever that if officials accept a contract from a school, they honor that contract," Kramer said. "Things come up, life happens. If they can't fill a contract, at the very least, it's customary to offer a replacement. For these athletic directors and these assigners, I can only imagine, it's got to be a nightmare trying to replace somebody."

Games are still being played, but as the quality of officiating wanes, ripple effects show on the field. In track and field, where meets can be run with one licensed official and a gaggle of volunteers, OHSAA director of track and field officiating development B.J. Duckworth has seen athletes from areas with fewer officials commit more violations at tournament, ending their seasons prematurely.

"Things they are doing - maybe they're running inside the lane line, or their exchange is out of the zone - there's no official to see it, because the only official there is the one starting the races," Duckworth said. "A lot of our district meets in the East and Southeast, we have a higher number of violations than those out of the Northeast, because there's a higher number of officials in regular season competition, and those athletes get called on those violations and they adjust."

With junior high, freshman and JV games facing an even bigger crunch, the same decline in play is likely to trickle into varsity sports across the board as athletes miss chances to sharpen their skills.

"That's when kids learn the game and want to play," Stried said. "More kids play when they're younger than when they're older, and we want them to keep playing. If they don't have competition opportunities when they're younger, that may lessen their interest in the sport."