Fewer whistles are being blown on fields and courts across the country and locally. The issue has been growing over the last decade due to a shortage of referees.
“We just don't have the officials to cover the games,” Los Padres Basketball Officials Association President Gaston Ketting-Olivier stated.
The pandemic brought record-low numbers of referees. In 2022, the National Federation of State High School Associations found that 50,000 referees had left since the 2018-2019 season.
Mission Prep Executive Athletic Director Mary Jo Pruitt, who has 11 years of athletic administrative experience, explained she’s dealing with the shortage, especially with beach volleyball and boys volleyball. With limited referees, scheduling conflicts and off-site logistical considerations, the shortage makes it a nightmare for coaches and administrators.
“It's little bit of a gamble when you're putting the schedule together to ensure that it's all going to work out," she said. "Because the worst is, you don't want to ruin the student-athlete experience, like, they are the center.”
Many referees want better pay but Ketting-Olivier says the number one reason referees don’t want to continue is because of the increased poor treatment of them at games by parents, fans and even coaches.
“I would say the primary reason would be the environment the officials have to work in," Ketting-Olivier said. "So you're talking about fans yelling at the officials, parents yelling at the officials and coaches.”
For Pruitt, she saw it firsthand this fall in her first year at Mission Prep.
“What I experienced in the fall, for example, with football is that we had to have a contingency plan of getting our refs out of the stadium after each game and getting them out with some sort of security around them just to ensure that no one was going to come up and berate them or give them a hard time.”
Using basketball as an example, with only 72 officials in Ketting-Olivier’s unit, he says on a given night there can be between 300-350 games for that crew to cover.
“I’d like to get better pay, obviously, and then get more officials into the unit so that my officials aren't working doubleheaders and triple header each night,“ he said.
While the solution isn’t simple to solve, local club basketball founder Mike Wozniak says that it will take people in all corners of this issue to help improve it.
“It takes strong parenting, strong leadership and coaching, and then it just takes a strong individual to not kind of fall victim to referees shaming or jumping into that arena," Wozniak explained.
If you’re interested in becoming a referee, the Los Padres Officials organizations constantly have refereeing training opportunities.
Los Padres Soccer Referees Association
Los Padres Football Referees Association
Los Padres Basketball Referees Association
