Official review: NMAA seeks to recruit — and retain — referees for often onerous job

At high school sporting events there often are derisive outbursts from fans toward referees and umpires. Some comments even draw wry smiles from the officials, such as “Check your phone, you just missed a call.” Or, “Someone call 911 because we just got robbed.”

Good-natured stuff.

But in recent years, abuse from fans (i.e. parents) has been escalating across the country. The New Mexico Activities Association said that is a major reason many of its veteran arbiters are retiring at an earlier age than in the past.

That means candidates as young as 15 (who would work only sub-varsity games) are being invited to fill the growing void. And those newbies have been opting out in relatively quick fashion, also.

All this is making it extremely difficult for the NMAA to provide its 160 member high schools the desired number of officials to handle events at the varsity and sub-varsity levels throughout the school year.

As the saying goes, “With no high school officials there are no high school sports.”

Here are the numbers

The NMAA’s Zac Stevenson, the director of officiating services and assistant director of sports, said it’s too early to know how many refs and umps will be on hand this school year since registration is still open, but trends continue to show growth since the pandemic.

“That (officiating total) tends to be a moving number as people are continuously signing up, especially as we get closer to the season,” Stevenson said. “Since I joined the office in the fall of 2021, we have routinely increased numbers in the month of August and even into September for fall sports.

“To give an example, football registrations as of today (Tuesday) are at 277 people. Last year at this time we were at 265 and ended up with 325 by the end of August and 338 for the season. We see this same trend across all sports.”

Across the country the numbers of officials registered were up 6 percent last school year over the previous prep campaign, according to the National Federation of High School Associations. There’s a quirk to the NFHS numbers, though. Their totals don’t reflect the true number of bodies on hand.

For instance, if a referee or ump participates in say three sports, he/she would count as three officials. Using that formula for the NMAA, it had 2,124 officials registered two years ago and 2,181 last season, an uptick of 2.61 percent.

‘Thick skin’ is lacking

According to New Mexico Officials Association referee Steve Wagner, the secretary of the Albuquerque Football Association: “Not only are our numbers down (referring to individual officials involved across the board), but the younger guys and gals that are coming in are not handling the pressure and the criticism as well as some of the seasoned people.

“This is my 23rd year and the newcomers don’t have the thick skin of the veterans and rejection is harder. But we tell them, this is just a game, so be comfortable. We try to protect them and not throw them to the wolves. We try to put them in with veterans.”

Said 26-year softball umpire/mentor Rick Carbajal of Belen: “We don’t have trouble recruiting officials, it’s keeping them. We do let them know up front what they’re in for, but we also tell them this is great fun and that they’ll have the best seat in the house.”

And they’d get paid.

Survey results are sobering

Two weeks ago at the New Mexico High School Coaches Association Summer Conference held at the Albuquerque Convention Center, NFL referee Carl Cheffers spoke to the assemblage that included many umps and refs.

Cheffers said it’s a hostile work environment officiating events and that in a national survey of prep officials “69 percent of the respondents said it’s only getting worse.”

He also said 51 percent of respondents said they have felt threatened on the job from fans and/or coaches.

“Personally threatened at a sporting event!” a bewildered Cheffers said. “It’s really eye-opening.”

First-hand experience

John Quick, 57, who began umpiring youth baseball in 1988 while in Chicago, is an NMAA regional assigning coordinator for officials. He knows what some of those refs/umps deal with.

“When I was coming up and doing high school games and at other levels, you would experience, ‘Hey Blue, he was safe!’ Just general heckling from a fan. No problem.”

But later came an experience that was indeed a problem.

“I had fans threaten me, come out to the parking lot after the game and want to fight over a baseball game,” he said. “They’d call me every name in the book.

“And if you know anything about baseball umpires, we have the world’s largest locker room — the parking lot. Most times there’s no security. There’s nobody around to stop fans from approaching us and belittling us or throwing things at us.”

Brad Bock, 56, a football and volleyball official, knows well the relationship between fans and officials from both sides.

“As a parent I had a son who played (club) hockey and I’m sort of embarrassed to say I was hell on refs initially — and then as a coach, too,” he said. “It wasn’t until I started reffing that I realized it’s not a very good thing for fans to be hard on them. Fans don’t know the rules, they don’t know the training you go through or how much time and effort you put in.”

What’s the NMAA doing about harassment?

It’s called the Two-Strike Rule:

Any time an egregious act of unsportsmanlike conduct by a team participant, including a coach, occurs two or more times during the same season, at the same school, in the same activity, the team will be suspended from participation in that activity for the remainder of the season.

The same rules hold for fans, meaning all spectators will be suspended from attending that team’s home games for the remainder of the season for repeated unsportsmanlike conduct.

In general, though, it’s the job of school administrators of the home team to quell unruliness, and this policy has helped them manage spectators.

“To date, no team or fanbase has received more than one strike,” Stevenson said. “And in the second year of the policy in 2024-25 few strikes were needed. This is a a credit to the work done by the schools.”

Big money could be made

There aren’t many prep officials who are using their time on the job as a steppingstone to the pros.

Many are retirees who like making spare cash and staying active. And there are former athletes just out of high school or college who want to stay in touch with sports. Also, recent empty-nesters are looking to fill their days with officiating assignments now that they aren’t watching their children compete.

And then there’s Albuquerque’s Land Clark, 63.

As recently as 2006 he was working prep basketball playoff games in the Pit. But his forte is football, and nowadays he’s a referee in the NFL, a position that pays more than $200,000 a year according to various websites. There’s no higher rung on the officiating ladder.

On the basketball court, a big success story is that of Curtis Vigil, 41, brother of Commissioner of Officials Carl Vigil. Curtis also had his start with the NMAA. He recently was awarded a position as a referee for Division I basketball games as a member of the Collegiate Consortium, which covers the Big Ten, Mountain West, Horizon, Mid-American and Summit conferences.

At the conference he conducted multiple film studies with basketball officials.

Here’s how to get in touch with the NMAA

Interested in being an official? Contact Commissioner of Officials Carl Vigil at 505-923-3286 or carl@nmact.org. The registration fee is $80 for up to two sports and $20 for each additional one. Pay ranges from $40 to $100 for the vast majority of assignments. Register on the NMAA’s official platform at DragonFly MAX.

One more thing: The aforementioned Bock, a 23-year military vet, would like fellow retired veterans, along with those currently in the military or National Guard, to join him on the fields and courts. They would receive cost-saving benefits that can be found on the Battlefields2Ballfields.org website.