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May 05, 2023

Why the athletes are the real losers in the referee shortage

Manistee Catholic Central players embrace one another after a 41-40 loss to

Manistee Catholic Central players embrace one another after a 41-40 loss to Brethren on Feb. 25, 2023 at Manistee Catholic Central High School.

Editor's note: The following article is part three of a three-part series discussing the high school referee shortage in the state of Michigan.

For over a century, sports have played a role in the lives of high school students in northern Michigan.

In 2023, high school sports is facing a problem which is creating headaches for students, parents, coaches, spectators and administrators alike.

What was once an abundant pool of referees is beginning to shrink. From 2012-2021, the Michigan High School Athletic Association has witnessed 25.58% of its registered officials walk away from serving as the governing body of high schools sports games.

Without these officials, high school athletes don't play games. There is no winner and loser. Any postseason recognition from a conference, district, region or state flies out the window faster than a worn piece of bubble gum by a passenger of a car barreling down an expressway.

Members of the Onekama girls basketball team celebrate winning a district championship with a 50-37 win over Brethren on March 3, 2023 at Buckley High School.

Without these officials there is no longer the chase of a state title. The opportunity for valuable life lessons becomes erased.

What will it take to solve this threat to high school sports?

To fully understand the shortage, one must understand what one goes through to earn this particular level of power and trust.

For an official like John O'Hagan, whose days as a referee began with T-ball games when he was 11. By 17, he joined his first crew for high school sports.

His process to become an official was simple. First, pass an open-book test. Second, find a crew to work with.

For the last 38 years, John O'Hagan has been a high school referee, with his passion beginning to spread within his household. Once John's bright-eyed son Jayden, then in junior high, began to accompany him to games, the side hustle began to spread to the next generation.

Once Jayden O'Hagan entered his junior year of high school he entered the MHSAA's legacy program. This allowed him to be mentored while officiating elementary basketball games before graduating to the high school level.

But what type of planning does a referee need to do?

Referees are self contractors. They join associations, attend rules meeting and upward of 10 training sessions a year. Creating a tax plan for this income source is required.

According to John O'Hagan, basketball officials make $70-80 for varsity games and $55-65 for a junior varsity game. Working a doubleheader two-to-three times a week can net a referee between $250 and $435 of extra income a week.

John O’Hagan (left) and Jayden O’Hagan work a varsity basketball game.

While some sports like track, cross country and occasionally wrestling have athletic directors contact referees directly, sports like football, volleyball, basketball, baseball, softball and soccer are done through assignors.

For instance, high school football in northern Michigan is feeling the effects of the referee shortage. The earlier athletic directors submit their schedules to assignors, the more likely games are played under the lights on Friday nights. If an assignor is short on officials for any given Friday, games may be rescheduled to Thursday night or on Saturday at a time at which assignors have referees available.

This process not only creates a sense of security for securing referees, but saves athletic directors like Karen Leinaar from making hundreds, if not thousands, of phone calls throughout a school year.

"I can contact one or two people in the area, give them my schedules and say ‘please, please please give me officials,’" Leinaar said. "Ninety-nine percent of the time they do (have referees available) on the dates that we have scheduled. Every once in a while they'll call back and they'll say ‘I don't have enough bodies to help you out on this day, but we could change it to this day.’"

Barb Beckett has spent her life around sports. After hanging up her whistle 15 years ago due to knee issues, she now serves as the head of an association which assigns referees across 27 schools in northern Michigan.

In the past, referees were able to ease their way into various levels. A referee had to spend a specific number of years at the junior high or junior varsity level before graduating to varsity action. With the shortage of referees reaching its current stage in 2023, it's become a process morphing into a forged by fire as opposed to a natural development.

Fortunately, northern Michigan schools are aware of this issue.

"Ninety-nine percent of (referee's) games are problem free, trouble free, tons of fun, working with great partners. The kids are great, coaches are good," Beckett said. "A lot of times they only remember that one or two games during the year when they had a bad experience. My time was spent saying 'you know what, you're gonna have these bad experiences, but you just had six games in a row where everybody told you that.'"

Much like coaches, referees can also serve as on-court educators.

"We're there to make sure that these kids have fun and that they learn the game of basketball," Jayden O'Hagan said. "It's not necessarily about punishing them every single time they make a mistake. We're teaching these kids the game. We want them to learn the game the right way. These coaches fail at that in the middle of games, and that's where it comes back on us because they expect us to bail out players. But we're not about that. We don't bail out anybody in the game.

"We call the game the way we see it."

The Onekama student section makes its presence felt against Frankfort on March 10, 2023 at Bear Lake High School.

If the number of available referees continues to drop, it may morph the landscape of prep sports into a permanent nightmare.

Games turn into scrimmages. No winner, no loser.

It's a conversation Leinaar's had with coaches, parents and spectators who tend to get a bit overzealous at times.

"Until we stop a game, until we don't have somebody that's an official walk-in to officiate a game ... I don't know if people will understand it," Leinaar said. "They seem to think that it's only a threat. No, it's getting to be reality. I wish I had the magic potion.

"My biggest fear is I'm gonna need an official, and at five o'clock when they're supposed to be walking in the door I'll get a call and say ‘Hey, Karen, by the way, we've decided we're not coming. We don't feel safe.’"

The issue is not exclusively at the high school level and above. This type of toxicity is spewing to the elementary school level — an age level where the participants are learning the basic fundamentals of basketball to go with multiplication and how to tie their shoes.

This age level is also a proving ground for high school students to become referees. In 2023, it's an opportunity many are skipping.

"Now those high school kids look at us and go ‘yeah, there's no way I'm gonna do that. I don't need an adult yelling at me, screaming at me that I'm doing it wrong,’" Leinaar said. "But yet those adults that are yelling and screaming aren't willing to step on the court either. Not only are we adults demonstrating to little guys that it's OK to yell at people, but they're learning that behavior. So that as they get older, they may have a tendency to see that that's OK and they can do that too. And it's not.

"We may lose high school, middle school and elementary sports because we don't have officials. How sad that would be?"

Without young officials coming up the pipe, the shortage will continue to grow. Without officials, there will be no championship game. There won't be any all-state selections.

Without officials, kids' opportunity to learn valuable life lessons and healthy habits is ripped away.

"The kids are going to suffer more right now from the lack of officials and the lack of experienced officials from misbehavior by the adults," Beckett said. "They should probably become officials. I know they won't because they never do. I don't know what the answer to that one really is … it definitely does hurt the kids.

"For some reason I guess they don't think it matters. Maybe there's lots of umpires and referees that can be replaced, but we are finding that that is not the case anymore."

Even if referees are available, it's not a guarantee that they will go to any particular school.

"There's certain schools that I refuse to go to because I know how rough it'll be," Jayden O'Hagan said. "I know that I will get eaten alive before I even go into the game. That is how known they are for having issues."

When asked about the grind of basketball season, John O'Hagan was quick to point out a shift in sports seasons made official in 2007. This shifted girls basketball from a fall sport to being played in winter.

Before this switch happened, basketball officials worked two-to-three games a night from late August to March. An eight-month period with manageable hours.

Once the shift happened in 2007, however, the schedule moved from December to March, working both boys and girls basketball seasons, doubling down on the hours required in a shorter time span of the year.

With 28.18% of basketball referees calling it quits between 2012 and 2021, the talent pool for assignors continues to become smaller. Some referees are tasked with working up to six nights a week.

But John O'Hagan also noticed a similarity between referees and parents: both are enduring a daunting travel schedule throughout basketball season.

Both referees and parents are traveling thousands of miles during basketball season. In northern Michigan, that includes venturing through rain, sleet, ice and snow storms.

"I see parents running back and forth with their kids," he said. "One night they might have to go to a game because their daughter plays and now there's a boys game the same night. They go, and the price of tickets and everything else is going up. It's just a lot."

So what's the answer to this problem? What's the magic formula to re-stock the deficit of referees?

The answer to this question is undefined in 2023. The pieces are laid out, but this particular puzzle isn't solved yet. But what happens if the puzzle remains unsolved may spell doom to high school sports.

"I don't know what the answer is to contain it," John O'Hagan said. "But what will happen is we'll run out officials. That's happening already. They're canceling games because they don't have enough officials. That's going to be a sad day if that ever happens, where kids can't compete.

"If you have the answer to change that, you'd be a billionaire."