Do you like sports? Looking for part-time work? Hope you get more exercise?
Why not be a high school sports referee in Tucson? If you work a varsity basketball, football or soccer game, you will be paid $85 per game, plus mileage. That’s about $100 for two hours of work.
You are needed; hometown high schools need your help.
The historic shortage of high school officials in Tucson is such that those who work varsity basketball games are also required to work junior varsity games two hours earlier. That’s another $50. Try to get that much from a part-time job at Chipotle or Subway.
The lack of officials is forcing the shift to some 2022-23 high school basketball and football games normally played on Fridays through Saturdays or even Mondays.
“We’re struggling,” says Dave Whatton, Tucson area commissioner of officers for the Arizona Interscholastic Association. “Since the middle of the football season, I’ve had to find three or four officials every week outside of the Tucson area to help referee our games, and that includes using brand new officials, those who are not yet certified to play varsity matches.
“Sometimes it brings nastiness and a real lack of sportsmanship out of the stands.”
A few days ago, Whatton held the annual basketball tip-off meeting with Southern Arizona officials. There were 136 judges.
“We need about 180,” he says. “The numbers are really, really bad.”
If you scan the list of Southern Arizona’s 15 football certified referees – each with five referees – the names of highly accomplished officials like Bill Carson, Jerry Gastellum, Boyd Morse, Bob Bertagnoli, BJ Fogltance, Jim Purdy and Chris Schagel will make you think nothing has morphed into Tucson’s historic high school sports officiating excellence.
But times are changing. Fewer and fewer younger officials are entering the system. Whatton says significantly more than half of Tucson officials are 55 or older.
Tucson Final Four basketball referee Chris Rastatter, recently named coordinator of all NCAA men’s basketball officials, says the culture surrounding AIA and high school sports has been changed by the abusive behavior of parents and fans.
“It turns young officials away,” says Rastatter, who grew up officiating Tucson high school games and remains director of the Tucson Youth Officiating Program. “The number of entry-level officials is declining.”
If the officiating numbers in football are bad, they will get worse when high school football and basketball begin next month. Both of these sports have several matches each week.
“We won’t have enough officials to cover JV and varsity games for those sports,” Whatton says. “In about 80% of the games we scheduled for soccer last year, we were forced to use two-man crews instead of three-man crews. This is happening all over the state.”
It’s a dramatic change from previous decades, when prominent Tucson athletes such as Terry Francona and Ed Vosberg, both major-league baseball players, began working their way through the umpiring system.
“We were all clamoring for more work, more games,” says Whatton, a Flowing Wells High School graduate who began officiating 30 years ago. “Back then you were happy to come to work two games a week, and that was even the case with people like Terry Francona. Now you can work five days a week with freshman, JV and varsity games. The need is so critical.”
The two-year reduction and shutdown of games for COVID-19 became a big part of the problem. For whatever reason, many Tucson officials did not return to the AIA system after the 2019 and 2020 high school seasons.
Tucson has maintained its excellence in service for nearly 100 years. The list of famous Tucson officials began in 1926, when UA quarterback Button Salmon’s backup, Ralph Deal, embraced the profession and became one of the leading officiating figures in Arizona and the Southwest for 40 years.
Deal sparked an impressive procession of Pima County Sports Hall of Fame officials such as Bud Grainger, Gordon Overstreet, Don Moore, Dean Metz, Jim Markert, Pat Flood, Ed Hochuli, Bobby Rauh, Boyd Baker, Jim Fogltance, Bob Scofield and Rastatter.
It seemed Tucson was forever destined to be one of America’s leading cities for high school athletic directors.
“Another problem is that the new people we get are rushed to university assignments,” Whatton says. “Typically, it takes at least two years of working freshman and JV games before you can put someone in a varsity game. Now, because the numbers are so far down, we’re putting too many new officials into varsity situations before they’re properly trained. The sport himself suffers.”
Whatton and the AIA are busy recruiting younger officials. The AIA website has a page it labels “Become Official” that explains the process for doing so. Those who have recently graduated from upper secondary school are not charged a registration fee. Locally, Amphitheater High School athletic director David Humpreys recently recruited 16 former Panthers athletes to become starters.
“What I tell the younger, potential servicemen is that you can make more money in less time as a serviceman than you can working at Starbucks or McDonalds,” Whatton said. “My feeling is if we can get them for three years, they’ll be hooked.”
Contact sports columnist Greg Hansen at 520-573-4362 or ghansen@tucson.com. On Twitter: @ghansen711
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