Welcome back to "Thoughtful Tuesdays".
You know the main reason I’m not keen on adding on-field officials to Ultimate (whether they’re called referees, umpires, observers or whatever).
Sports that rely on volunteer (and even paid) on-field officials are in crisis - and its a crisis that isn't going to get better.
This I’ve had this general impression for a while – witness the weekly media meltdowns of ‘refs getting it wrong’, and this translating into officials being abused and attacked, and the desperate attempts of the professional sports to recruit and retain on-field officials.
But a couple of people I’ve met from other sports over the last few weeks have really brought this home for me.
I recently chatted with a middle aged fellow who works full time but also referees rugby league games in his spare time (he returned to the role when his last kid moved out of home).
The previous week his sport was so desperate for on-field officials that he refereed NINE (9) games!
He enjoys it and he knows that without people like him doing it then the sport he loves will fall over, and he is paid for his time on the field and travelling to games, but still, he conceded he’s not sure how long he can go on.
A bit earlier I was also talking to someone involved in little athletics, who mentioned that to properly run an athletics day for about 200 teenagers they needed about 40 volunteers to act as officials (this doesn’t count the volunteers who do support functions like food, venues, administration, etc etc).
I could only gape. They went on to tell me a litany of other reasons why athletics was in crisis and needed government support, but I was still stuck on the ratio – 40/200 = 1/5.
I really wanted to tell them that they were *doing it wrong*. That our sort of society had long abandoned an approach that have many many people both available and enthusiastic to volunteer. That the days of vast numbers of Mums and Dads having the time and motivation to do this kind of stuff were in decline (there will always be Mums and Dads doing the right thing of course, just not as many as there used to be). But I kept my tongue because I didn’t want to be rude.
All I could do was watch them gape back when I told them back that a 200+ player Ultimate tournament usually featured only one (1) official, and that person wasn’t on the field at all and was viewed as a necessary evil (but highly respected, nonetheless).
The lack of on-field officials in Ultimate will be a key part of the growth of Ultimate relative to other sports over the next 20 years, as the number of volunteers and people willing to be on-field officials (and if they need to be paid, this will come from the pockets of players) continues to decline.
5 comments:
Little Athletics is probably a bad comparison as Athletics encompasses 6 different fields events each running concurrently (with high likelihood of two of each discipline simultaneous), then track events including hurdles running throughout the day whilst the field events happen. Track events then need people on the stopwatch and Place judges looking for finishing positions etc etc etc
Yet the major difference between athletics and ultimate, is the officials in Athletics are not usually competitors as well (especially Little Athletics).
And having been involved in Little Athletics for over 20 years, I agree that the number of volunteers has reduced over the last two decades, yet there are always new parents willing to learn and help out. Its just a matter of making it easy for them to pick up the skills required to help run an event (not to mention understand the rules) I am sure i have read a blog about that topic not long ago.
And given the position of Little Athletics around the country (40,000 athletes in NSW, and almost 100,000 athletes throughout Australia), i think maybe they are actually doing it right...
Well, I think the comparison is quite good in terms of volunteer officials required per participant, but this isn't to bag athletics in general.
The point I'm making is that as volunteer participation continues to decline community wide, Ultimate won't have the crises that are predicted for those activities that require lots (or any, really) volunteer officials.
As far as doing it right, I suspect long term that athletics will need to continue to rethink how it operates - eg using computer chips to track times for long distance events, rather than people with stopwatches; dropping official heavy events and favouring those that don't require many officials; etc (Having enough adults to supervise children is a different story).
ps I am surprised that someone with 20 years experience in athletics is reading an Ultimate blog - but I guess the beauty of both is that they're fun sports that are about the basic joy of competing, so its surprising there aren't more people doing both.
Apologies. I meant it was a bad comparison as Atheltics effectively has 7-8 different sports running at the same time. If we picked just one discipline, such as Track, then the number of volunteers per competitor decreases dramatically.
Maybe a comparison to Tennis would show the difference in much greater perspective... minimum one official for 2 (or 4) competitors.
As for the issue of volunteers totally drying up, if that were to happen, there would be no sports anywhere... Just as ultimate players run ultimate tourneys for the love of the sport, volunteers in other sports do it for the love of their sport.
As for reading ulti blogs, i found this sport about 12 months! Makes it very difficult when Terrigal Towel is on same weekend as one of NSW largest little athletics events... But Little Athletics has enough volunteers that they dont miss one extra official :-)
Totally agree.
I have often been in discussions with people who think we're at the stage where we need observers/refs. Personally I don't think we do (story for another day) but the key point is always the same - "Where are you going to get them from?"
Also, "How are you going to pay them?" Good luck getting players to agree to an increase in fees!
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