Shortage of referees worst-kept secret across L-L League

• By Mike Gross/LNP | LancasterOnline

Tom Bennett played football — the American version — at Lancaster Catholic and Villanova University in the 1960s and early ’70s.

He is a successful businessman, a golfer, a husband and father, and the membership chairman of the Lancaster County Sports Hall of Fame. He serves on the East Hempfield Township Board of Supervisors and other municipal boards.

And he officiates high school soccer games.

After his children got older in the 1990s, Bennett said, he finally had some free time on weekends to do something on his own.

“Being an official in soccer puts you right in the middle of everything,” he said. “And that was the appeal of it for me.’’

That last part makes him a rarity and, perhaps, a vanishing breed. As the Lancaster-Lebanon League assignor for boys and girls soccer, he’s acutely aware of how rare that is.

“There’s a shortage of officials everywhere, in every athletic competition,” Bennett said.

That shortage is the worst-kept secret in the L-L, and late last year it pushed league officials to propose tweaking its football schedule in fall, to spread out section games over Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays.

To keep it fair for everyone, L-L League Football Chairman Tommy Long had devised a plan in which each section would have its own week of potential Thursday and/or Saturday games: Section One in week four; Section Two in week five; Section Three in week six; Section Four in week seven; and Section Five in week eight.

But the L-L Athletic Directors Association met Jan. 18 at Warwick High School and determined that plan won’t be necessary. Probably.

“If things stay as they are today, we have enough crews to cover all games on a Friday night except for the ones that are normally Saturday,’’ L-L Executive Director Todd Reitnouer said, noting that two weeks are stretched to the max, which could require moving some games in the case of illness, injuries or other issues. “Traditionally, Friday’s football night. We want to have that tradition and we want to try and play football on a Friday night.”

The 2024 schedule will be finalized in August. For now, the L-L seems to have postponed the inevitable, but the shortage still must be addressed, either through recruiting, scheduling or both.

“This is kind of where we are in the world,” longtime L-L football officials assignor Bob Gramola said. “I think we’re at the dawn of this becoming dire. We’re having a hard time getting officials. We have a lot of guys right now that are just hanging on.

“The horizon does not look good for the Lancaster chapter because I have 25 or 30 guys who are in their mid- to late 60s, and they’re going to retire soon,” Gramola said.

“We have a lot of guys who aren’t going to be doing this in the next five years. If we don’t get some new people to backfill — get them trained and ready for a football Friday night — it’s going to be dire.”

‘The worst it’s been’

“This is the worst it’s been,’’ said L-L field hockey assignor Sherry Swope, who has been officiating field hockey since 1985. “The numbers are down. Most of my officials do double duty — a (varsity) game at 4 o’clock and another one at 7.

“Now there are quite a few schools that don’t have JV, so that helps, in a way, although, of course, it’s not good for the sport.’’

The PIAA governs 23 interscholastic sports.

A few, like golf, tennis and bowling, don’t require officials at regular-season events beyond the oversight provided by coaches. Most of the others — perhaps all of the others — have a less-than-ideal number of officials.

“We have some hurdles,” said PIAA Assistant Executive Director Patrick Gebhart, who oversees officiating. “There are a lot of moving parts when it comes to the problem, but, yes, granted, we’re not where we want to be.”

The moving parts differ from sport to sport.

Football requires the most officials per game, ideally seven, but more often five, because of the shortage, in the Lancaster-Lebanon League — though the L-L’s Berks County schools use a six-man crew.

The Lancaster chapter — which assigns all L-L League home games — has 88 football officials, plus three people in the PIAA junior official program. Before the COVID-19 pandemic, Gramola said, it wasn’t unusual to have more than 120 officials.

Wrestling requires just one official per match but is on the high end in terms of required technical expertise.

Soccer is a constant-motion game played on a field as large as 80 yards wide and 120 yards long. Officiating it well requires substantial cardiovascular health.

Where are the refs?

Where did all the officials go? And why isn’t there a line around the block for people to take the PIAA test, get a uniform and a shiny new whistle?

“A multitude of reasons,” Long said. “There’s the hassles officials deal with at games, be it with fans or coaches. They get paid decently — they really do — but it might not be worth that headache. And jobs impact them. They’re not full-time officials, so they’re working their regular job, and depending on what that job schedule is, it doesn’t allow them to officiate.”

The National Federation of State High School Associations published a study in November based on an anonymous survey that drew responses from 35,813 officials from all 50 states.

The average age of respondents was 56.68 years. Sportsmanship, 69% said, was getting worse. More than half said they have felt fear from fan, coach or player behavior at some point in their career, and 12% said they have been physically assaulted during or after a game.

Then there are the scheduling problems assignors live with.

Gebhart said that in rural parts of western Pennsylvania in particular, a full soccer season wouldn’t be possible without bringing in officials from Ohio and West Virginia.

Lacrosse is a relatively new sport within the PIAA.

Many sports-aware people who have enough base knowledge of, say, football, baseball and basketball to learn to officiate them, might not know where to begin with lacrosse.

Gebhart said there are schools in the state that would otherwise have lacrosse programs that don’t simply because there aren’t nearly enough qualified refs.

There is also a universal issue, related — like many things — to the COVID-19 pandemic.

In 2015, the Pennsylvania Legislature passed a law requiring officials to pass three child-abuse clearance checks: one from the state police, one from the state Department of Health and Human Services and one from the FBI.

The FBI check is rigorous and requires fingerprinting. The cost for all three is $60. They’re good for five years.

The first round of clearance checks ran out in 2020, just as COVID-19 began shutting down schools and high school sports.

“Many of our more seasoned officials decided that they might have had an underlying illness that they felt would be difficult for them to officiate,” Gebhart said. “They dropped out and never came back.’’

Growing the ranks

“I just think people in general have more things going on in their lives, and they don’t have time to volunteer to get into officiating,” Long said. “Years ago, that’s what people did: When they got out of playing or they got out of coaching, they became an official. You volunteered for your local youth league. That’s doesn’t happen as much anymore.”

By some measures, the worst might be over.

Even with seasonal spikes and variants, COVID-19 is no longer leading to widespread shutdowns, cancellations and quarantines.

Leagues, PIAA districts and schools are, more than ever, actively involved in recruitment, education and development of officials.

Gebhart said there are about 1,000 more PIAA-registered officials across the state in all sports than there were in 2022.

The league is advertising in every platform possible for new officials and not just for football, though the football officiating pipeline, Gramola confirmed, is drying up. Quickly.

“We need to find ways to entice people to come out and get involved,” Reitnouer said. “We’re absolutely at the point in Pennsylvania and in our league — almost across the board — where we’re shifting schedules around because of the people we have.

“And we’ve been doing it for years. This isn’t new. This has been coming, and we’ve seen it coming. We don’t have enough experienced officials who can do varsity games.”

The PIAA has instituted a Junior Officials Program, with a goal of recruiting and developing teenage officials, and permitting 16- and 17-year-old officials to work at the junior high level and below.

At its championship events, the PIAA has tables and tents set up in hopes of raising interest in officiating.

It has sent recruiting posters to every school district in the state and handed out thousands of business cards that include QR codes linking to the PIAA website, where the process of applying to be an official can begin.

Anyone who wants to become an official can go to PIAA.org, click on Officials, create an account and within minutes be preparing for or even taking a sport-specific qualifying exam.

There’s a $40 fee, but Gebhart encouraged junior officials to call the PIAA directly so the fee can be waived.

“I’m urging people: Please call us. Please visit the website,’’ Gebhart said. “We’d love to walk anyone through it.’’

Meanwhile, shortages are making the league’s decision-makers scramble to craft contingency plans.

“I told everyone last fall that this was probably coming and to make any suggestions on how to handle it,” Long said. “I didn’t really get any additional follow-up. And I don’t think there’s a grand master plan that’s out there. So, if you get a Thursday game, have fun with it. Make it your Youth Night. There are options out there that you can make it a cool event. It’s just a lot more planning and more logistical things behind the scenes.”

Until the league can replenish its officiating pool, games on days other than Friday could become the new normal.

“We have a great group of officials who are doing it for all the right reasons,” Long said. “We just need more of them.”