A great question was raised by Josh Harvey (one of our ITA officials in Dallas and an obvious reader of our blog) in our previous post, comments section. Here is his comment:
"If the power that be don't address the scheduling arms race that is escalating year to year it will become increasingly difficult to recruit and train younger officials to fill the ranks. Oddly enough, as the lead time for scheduling moves further out, I end up committing to fewer matches than I did in my first few seasons, and dropping big conference work all together. If we are only supposed to make promises we know we can keep, I'm just going to make far fewer promises. I'm not well connected enough to start a revolution, but some of you reading this sure are, and its time for some kind of scheduling detente when fighting for qualified officials. A hard date for publishing match schedules? Maybe we can treat it like opening day of hunting season. I guess the big question is who would be the game warden?"
Since Josh is an official who works regularly for me (and does a great job), I appreciate his wisdom and thoughts into this comment. It is an issue that I agree with 100% and will tell you in advance that I will be doing all that I can do to get the current process changed.
For numerous years now, Myron Krueger, Vickie Wright, and I have been preaching over and over again that we need to wait until later in the year to send out our availabilities. Basically, we are asking something of our officials that is not reasonable and puts an undue hardship on each of them. However--our preaching and pleading has had no effect whatsoever! There are coordinators who are getting their availabilities out months and months in advance--and for no real reason other than to say they got their's out first of all.
Its time for some real and valid cooperation among the coordinators in this country to help remedy this glaring problem. In reality, you don't get more qualified officials by sending out the first availability on the planet earth. You just get folks that can and are willing to commit to doing something nearly a year away...
My SIMPLE SOLUTION to the problem is this: Every coordinator wait until November 1st of the year before the collegiate season begins to send out their availability. Every one can send their's out on the same day and I guarantee you that the "rank and file" will love us for doing this! Even at my age I don't like to commit to doing something 9 months in advance--especially when I don't even know if I will still be alive and kicking...
We are asking our officials to make an INDIVIDUAL COMMITMENT to something far out in the future and now maybe its time for our coordinators to make a GROUP COMMITMENT to wait until a reasonable date to ask for firm commitments from anyone.
If we actually were able to get a "universal availability date" out of our coordinators, that would also mean that we need firm commitments from our officials. Surely people can be more committed to something that is 2 months away than something that is 9 months away. I regularly have people who have to uncommit to working something because something came up in their lives to cause the change--and that's fine. If we are going to send out an UNREASONABLE availability then we need to be REASONABLE when we need to make changes.
How about it out there--are we willing to work together to make some constructive changes????
7 comments:
Randy:
University of Florida's Director of Tennis Operations Kate Harte recruits and assigns their officials.
She began soliciting officials for the 2018 season in August 2017. She stated "I would like to have the spring schedule finalized by early/mid-September so you can plan accordingly."
Payment Information:
$150 per dual match (chair umpire).
Mileage = .445 cents per mile.
Hotels will be reimbursed*, officials are required to make their own reservations** and will be reimbursed upon submitting receipts.
Checks will be sent biweekly.
I concur that assigning should be done on November 1.
The worst fiasco I have had with scheduling officials was the time I scheduled early. Some of the matches were changed. Official canceled.and some matches were rained out. This is just the ITA side.add in UIL and USTA and you have areal nightmare. Now I wait until last of December or first of January..now I have no problems unless some one gets sick. My problem now is trying to get new recruits thru nucula.
Help
Jybarra
If we all waited until the same time then the officials could see the totality of all the matches and make themselves available for the ones they wanted to work. Sounds like a great idea to me...
I also totally agree. To late to start it this year as many already sent out.
I will be on board next year if others are.
I schedule for 3 schools and live in an area where we only have about 7-9 ITA officials available. I rely heavily on out of town officials to cover everything. Some weekends I have as many as 12 matches to schedule. I always feel the need to beat the competition because of this. A set date for everyone would be nice.
many of us in SEC got hit up in early July for 2018 year
Let's hear Arkansas' and Baylor's excuse why they strive to recruit officials before anybody else does, with the stipulation you can't back out after accepting their assignments.
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