There’s a shortage of high school football game officials

No reported shortage of game officials for soccer and volleyball, but this is not the case for football games.

Their problem is, yes, a lack of officials. For this weekend alone, there’s been schedule changes that couldn’t be avoided. So it was a matter of rescheduling rather than postponing or cancelling games.

This is not uncommon, but is getting worse. That was clear when a season-opening contest Albuquerque Manzano and Las Cruces scheduled for Aug. 20 was delayed for more then an hour because of a scheduling error resulted in an assigned officiating crew not showing up.

It almost occurred again this week when a mix-up in game official assigning had the Laguna-Acoma at Santa Fe Indian School lined up for Friday night at the Braves’ field. The was then changed to Saturday afternoon, 1 o’clock, at Indian School.

Other changes involved the Moriarty at Capital game marked down for Friday nightat Jaguar Field, but when the mistake came up, it was decided to move the tilt to Thursday night, except that first-year head coach at Capital, Joaquin (Wax) Garcia had a problem with this.

“That would mean missing a practice,” said Garcia, “and with the young and inexperience squad we have, we can’t afford to skip practices.”

And so Garcia agreed to the non-district contest to be played Saturday morning, 10 o’clock, at Capital.

Espanola Valley was scheduled to host a non-district game versus Socorro on Friday night, but due to a problem finding enough officials for that night, the game was moved ahead to Thursday night, same time, same place.

There was also a shortage of game officials assigned to Los Alamos at Bernalillo in non-district play Friday night, but that was settled, and the game will go on.

No such problem for Pojoaque Valley’s visit to Cuba Friday night, except that Cuba had reported a water shortage and that scratched the game from that night. The Elks weren’t too happy about that as it has gotten away to a 2-0 start.

West Las Vegas did have that problem for a pair of Friday night games at home, and both contests were rescheduled for Thursday nights.

Some coaches have pointed out that officials are shrinking because instead of young ones, the ones still hanging around are older and can’t keep up with the fast-moving games. And coaches and fans are knocking the calls made on the gridiron.

That’s true. Exacerbating the issues is the fact is that many current officials are older and retiring because, yes, they can’t keep up with the speed of the game. And so if we don’t get creative and come up with some collective solutions, it’s only going to get worse.

And it’s got to come from everybody: fans, officials, schools. No officials, no games. Maybe there could be a tryout camp for officials. Before this, there hadn’t been that much of a problem, now suggestions could turn out to be helpful. Per

haps a raise for the officials could help.

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And so unless there’s a new, younger core of whistle-blowers, this could get worse, and this points to these recent schedule changes happening.e

There could also be some of the struggles in recruiting and retaining officials stems from a lack of pay commensurate to the amount of time they spend at games, which includes travel. Plus, a recent trend of unruly fan behavior and vitriol officials face could also be be a factor in these shrinking numbers.

Now Pojoaque Valley was set to play. officials were assigned and traveling plans were made until Elks’ head coach Pat Mares reported that Cuba officials had informed him Tuesday afternoon of the water shortage there and the school had been concerned about hygiene issues for the players.

Haven’t heard back from Mares, who said Pojoaque is looking for alternate opponents for this weekend. He said it was disappointing considering the sudden popularity of his football program.

“I already had about 10 more students come out for practice over the past few days,” he said, “and it’s unfortunate, so owe’ll see what we can do about this week.”

Sounds good, coach, but to line up another game with this short notice, means assigning game officials, and there again lies the problem as this week had the greatest amount of movement, with three games moved from their original Friday date.