One of the greatest difficulties that any of us face in life are those troublesome "thorns" that seem to appear in nearly every aspect of life. Especially troubling are those thorns that arise in the tennis world.One of my irritating thorns are those referees who send out an availability and then when you return it, they tell you they "want you" for specific dates. However, when the tournament time arrives they send you an email saying they either don't need you or don't need you for the amount of time they had previously committed to you.
Their favorite excuse is that "we didn't know how big the draw would be, so we overbooked." Folks, that just doesn't cut it! A referee should know fairly accurately how many officials and sites he/she is going to have before they send out the availability. Referees--do your homework! Its not right to ask an official to commit to you and then you not honor their commitment...
This is just one of my favorites "thorns". We would love to hear about some of yours.
5 comments:
So you came out of the closet, though briefly. It's a start. Nice pictures!
My favorite 'thorn' is college coordinators who send out their availability list. They ask you to return it to them by 'X' date and say they will get the assignments out by 'Y' date. You return your availability to them on or before 'X' date. Then you don't hear anything by 'Y' date.
Now what do you do? You have those matches penciled in as possibilities on your calendar. Do you not bid on other possible matches because you're waiting on the first school's assignments? Do you assume you weren't given any matches? Do you assume the coordinator had some delay?
Coordinators: if you can't get the assignments out when you said, please let people know. Let us know what to do. Things happen, we'll understand. And once you send out your assignments, send them to EVERYONE - including those who you did not assign matches to. We need to know to erase those possible matches from our schedules.
I realize some D1 coaches can be a nightmare when it comes to the schedules, budgets, # of officials, etc. etc. But when coordinators fail to give information to officials, it encourages some to bid on multiple matches for the same dates and then either accept the first match offered (then decline other offers) or accept the "best" match offered (whatever that is). I know this violates the official's code of conduct, but it still happens!
Oh, by the way, it helps when the universities will pay their officials in a timely manner - but that is likely another blog!
Good news. We finally got paid on 4-21-09 for SMU matches we did in January, 2009.
How's that for a thorn?
A thorn regularly irritated for coordinators/assignors/referees regards pay and payroll differences from one conference or region or event level to another;
Could you give an overview of what officials are paid in your area for different kinds of work (referee, umpire), particularly sanctioned tournaments and college duals/tournaments? Does pay include meals, housing, travel or any perks?
Also who does the assigning and who submits payroll to what entity how often to cut the checks?
And do you have an overarching officials organization like NCPTUA and APTUA that assigns and pays officials and contracts with schools of different conferences or regions?
And do you have this same sort of information for other conferences, like PAC-10 or pro official work, i.e, lines receive what, chairs receive what?
There is a lot of hearsay about the pay of officials, and a lot of folklore about who does what, when and how, and the area of pay for work could use some up to date info from those in the know.
I would hope this topic could stimulate a thread for all add their accurate information.
What school do you represent, coach?
Post a Comment