Coronavirus impacts the officiating community

Coronavirus impacts the officiating community

You know those guys and gals who wear striped shirts at sporting events that we all like to yell at.... they've been impacted by the coronavirus as well.

Káiámát news three sports director á kaleb gillock á had a chance to talk with a few of them today./// george á i assume you're talking about the referees?

Well i did chat with three of them this afternoon and they told me we do it to give back to the kids and back to the community and you know do it for some personal growth for ourselves.

Referees and officials aren't in the game for the money... they do it for the games they love.

Last week, when the remainder of the basketball season was abruptly canceled... referees from the rochester area officials association were left as shocked as the players.

Mj wagenson was in an officials meeting when she learned the news.

The feeling in the room with those 12 people was just surreal.

Like everybody just kind of sat there like whoa, now what do we do?

It was just kind of a strange feeling kind've like you're all dressed up with nowhere to go.

Jared butson and marshall behrens were officiating section finals at the mayo civic center last thursday.

They're taking comfort in the knowledge they'll referee more games in the future.

Still, they feel badly for the seniors robbed of a state title bid.

I think everybody kind of knew what nobody wanted to talk about that that likely was going to be the last game in front of a big crowd and it just á the mood down there although it was great competition there was just something that was a little off.

I was devastated for the seniors who never got a chance to see if they could win a state championship.

The immediate future for officials is fuzzy at best.

Activities directors have already distributed spring sports schedules to assignment officials, but assignments aren't being made before spring sports get the green light.

In the meantime á they'll keep training.

We were supposed to meet this past sunday and monday now they're pushed out to the 29th and 30th.

We're going to offer those meetings on a virtual platform which we've never done before but we need to obviously the crew took the opportunity of our conference call to point out there remains a nationwide shortage of officials.

So if you've ever considered joining the officiating ranks... now is the time to do so.

Afterall, no officials means no games.

Just do it.

Give it a try.

You know we're short officials in every sport so no matter what level you want to try no matter what sport you want to do, nobody