A couple of years back I posted Why Officials Quit and have continued to do a lot of research on the subject due to the fact that every sport organization that I work with is not only having challenges with player attrition, they also are losing officials to the point where many say they have to scale back on number of teams or games as a result, and in some states in the USA they have declared many of their sports programs are in jeopardy due to lack of officials.
This weekend I will be doing a talk on that very subject for Softball BC, titled “How to attract, retain and increase the number of officials in your organization”
It is based in part on the post I followed up with last year called “Why do Officials Officiate” but for purposes of this post wanted to share why we are losing so many officials year after year.
Top Reasons why officials are quitting are;
- It is not safe to fail:
Having talked to many officials and those responsible in various sports organizations, the trends are consistent, as I shared prior Hockey Canada loses 30% of their officials every year, as does every sport that I have talked to as we started to partner with various other sports organizations.
Why? Because the officials who take a lot of pride in not make mistakes, are quitting because of the abuse that they are taking from adults (parents, coaches or fans) when they do make a mistake OR when they believe they made a mistake.
This is one of the videos I came across that shows very clearly that the umpire made the right call, but received 17 different abusive phrases from parents who were seated in the visitor section (along the 1st base line) who did not have the same perspective as the umpire.
He clearly made the right call as did have the right perspective, but all the parents on the visiting team thought nothing of screaming out their perspective which was wrong.
- Poor Sportsmanship:
Above are the results for the largest study I have come across where over 17,000 officials replied to a survey from multiple sports done in 2017. Almost 40% stated it was the parents that were causing the problems, followed by almost 30% of coaches, combining for approx. 70%.
Poor Sportsmanship was also one of the top 3 reasons that were the reasons why 11,000 players quit playing lacrosse in the retention report Alberta Lacrosse shared with me.
No matter what organization that I reach out to potentially partner with across Canada regardless of the hat I am wearing, even though 70% of the issues leading to officials quitting which goes hand in hand with the players is poor sportsmanship, when I ask what they are doing to curve the problem, they say they don’t have budgets for coach or parental education.
Translation: They keep doing the same thing over and over again expecting different results (Insanity), posting signs at rinks or fields like the ones above, making it mandatory for parents and coaches to take respect in sport online course for approximately 3 hours but don’t rigidly enforce policies for a zero tolerance for ANY forms of harassment.
When asked at what level is sportsmanship the worst, 36% of the officials stated it was the youth competitive level, followed by 21.3% adult recreational level.
These results did not surprise me at all.
Youth Competitive due to high expectations from parents due for a return on investment for the tens of thousands of dollars they invest in their child’s completive youth sports experience to get an NCAA scholarship or play professionally is what is translating to the vocal minority of parents screaming and umpires when they perceive they made a bad call.
Parents – the majority of these officials are just a level above your son or daughter, and many officials start at the age of 12 years old, and within 3 years associations are starting all over again to recruit officials as most have quit.
The second highest level, adult recreational, having played adult rec hockey, as well as slo-pitch for many years, I saw it firsthand how many who were playing adult rec thought they were living the dream playing professionally and took it a wee bit too far and would go at refs or umpires like they lost a Stanley Cup or World Series Game.
Every time I would approach them and say, relax, it’s just a game (yet another PSA campaign by Hockey Canada in 2004 when things really started to ramp up in terms of parental behavior in the stands).
When officials were then asked if Sportsmanship is getting _______, almost 57% said it was getting worse, 27% neither better or worse but thankfully the remainder, close to 16%, stated that sportsmanship was getting better.
This I believe is due to all the organizations and awareness campaigns that have come to fruition in the last decade (including our own) to combat the impact of poor sportsmanship that is impacting the quality of the youth sports experience for kids.
What I was truly surprised with, however, was the fact that some officials responded (11.69%) publicly criticized other officials and when a fan at games, just over 16% confess they heckle their own fraternity. If truly are going to change the way officials are treated, they must adhere to the very same Respect rule I have for all my teams and NEVER criticize your teammates.
- Fear for their Safety
I shared this in the prior post that Almost 48% of the male respondents, and 45% of the female respondents shared they feared for their safety because of administrator, coach, player of spectator behavior?
What I did not highlight is just over 11% of male and 20% of female official felt uncomfortable or threatened by members of their very own officiating community.
Really?
What happened to all being it in together as a team? Again, officials have to respect all others and avoid threats towards others in their community if we are going to reverse their fear for their own safety.
How then do organizations reverse these trends by ensuring that officials have a safe to fail environment, take pride in becoming the best they can be, are not in fear, that sportsmanship includes respecting ALL calls made by officials?
Organizations have to stop putting up signs, sending out public service announcements and as a means “to deal with parents”. Most people don’t read signs anyway (thanks to my past experience working in the hospitality industry) and the time for PSA’s/Whitepapers is OVER. It has come time to activate strategies so that sports organizations are accountable for everyone’s safety and creating a quality sporting experience.
In lieu, invest in parent education and teaching their coaches how to engage parents in lieu.
The vast majority of parents are AMAZING people who are doing everything they can to support their kids navigate what has become professional youth sports in lieu of kids playing kids like it was when I grew up.
They also have to recognize that officials are key stakeholders to ensure that today’s youth have a positive sporting experience, without them, kids will merely be having practices.
I worked at BC Place Stadium in security for many years and worked many BC Lions games as well as concerts and if fans became unruly (more often than not due to drinking too much) it was really simple, they were removed from the facility.
If they got into a fist of cuffs with fellow fans, we escorted them to the Police Wagon where they were brought to the station and potentially charged.
If we did so at professional sports events, why then do we not do it at youth sports events?
In lieu of having security surveying the stands, coaches and parents should be doing the same just as they did a generation removed. If someone was acting up, a coach, parent or board member would approach them and eject them from the facility.
If a parent, coach or fan becomes unruly, too emotional, abusive, they should be removed so they can calm down and not permitted to return no differently when coaches are ejected. The vocal minority of parents that do so be held accountable to the point where future incidents are treated with longer suspensions and using the same 3 strike rule, if a repeat offender;
Sorry we will miss you.
Meaning, we will not permit you to be a member of our organization. Just like playing youth sports is a privilege (now more than ever due to pay to play model), so is that of being a member of the organization as parent, official, board member.
As far as I am concerned, no one, whether it be player, coach, official or board member should be in fear or a victim of verbal, worse yet potentially physical abusive threats and we need to bring the game back to the kids.
It’s time to stop doing the same things over and over again and expecting different results (Insanity)
Just like we should see the smiles on players when they are at games, the same should hold true for officials of any sport, they too should have a quality sport experience, otherwise the trends where 30% quit every year will just get worse.
Let’s all work together to bring the game back to the kids … where it belongs.
