Despite ongoing challenges finding officials for high school athletic events in Minnesota and across the country, the Minnesota State High School League remains optimistic when it comes to the fall sports season and beyond.
That optimism comes despite a large number of officials calling it quits during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic.
"As we headed into the pandemic, we had a number of officials contemplating moving on, retiring, or have work or family," said Jason Nickleby, Coordinator of Officiating Services. "When the pandemic came along, I think that really made that come to the forefront for a lot of people to realize they had other priorities like family or work. Also, if there were challenges with sportsmanship or how they were treated at games it just made it easier for them to move on to other things."
Coming out of the pandemic, the Nickleby said the officiating across all Minnesota high school activities was down 20 percent.
There were roughly 6,000 officials before the pandemic.
"That's a pretty substantial cut when you're talking about not losing any games or losing any number of teams," he said. "There's a record number of kids participating across the country and that's the case in Minnesota. We need to keep pace with officiating."
Football officiating
Ideally, if each of the 400-some Minnesota high school varsity football teams played a game on the same night, the state would have nearly 1,300 officials across 250 or so officiating crews.
As of last week, 1,100 officials had registered for the upcoming football season which can being games on September 1. There were roughly 1,150 football officials in 2021.
Not all of the high school football officials will cover varsity games, either, due to experience and some who choose not referee at the varsity level.
"We always see a flurry of activity when it comes to the registration deadline," Nickleby said. "I would anticipate that we would get back to that number or surpass it a little bit. So that's encouraging. We are not where we were before the pandemic, we're still a little short, but at least we'd be back to where we were last year. We don't want to backwards."
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The lack of officials is forcing teams to adjust their schedules with more Thursday and Saturday games.
Plus, MEA Weekend on October 20 throws a wrinkle into the schedule.
"MEA Wednesday is typically a night that every school plays. Now all the big school teams, the 32 teams in the biggest class, have to play on Thursday of MEA to make sure we have enough officials to cover their games."
Challenges across the board
Volleyball and soccer are facing their own set of officiating challenges.
Nickelby said 100 soccer officials who did not register last year registered for the 2022 season, but officiating numbers are the same as they were in 2021.
"We have 100 returning officials who have chosen not to come back for a variety of reasons," he added. "While we're not quite in the territory of what Iowa is describing with football, but we're certainly not where we'd like to be with soccer and volleyball."
Last week, officials with the Iowa High School Athletic Association said they were short more than 200 football officials for the 2022 season.
Soccer is more of a challenge to get officials in northwest Minnesota in the Bemidji and Detroit Lakes area.
"We do have a bit bigger challenge outside the metro area, but if you get outside of the bigger cities we do struggle a little bit more getting officials in a number of sports, soccer in particular," added Nickelby. "Not as many people have a background in soccer in certain areas of the state."
Recruiting new officials
Recruitment is underway for officials across Minnesota. The MSHSL has partnered with the Minnesota Youth Athletic Services and Minnesota Amateur Commission on expos, including an expo on August 29 in Eagan.
Work is underway to address ongoing poor treatment of officials by coaches, student-athletes and fans.
"Officiating high school events is about one of the safest places you can do it," Nickelby said. "There's going to be supervision and accountability. It is tied to our schools and it's education based. Behavior that wouldn't be tolerated in the classroom isn't going to be tolerated at a sporting event or at an activity."
More about officiating and how to become a MSHSL official can be found on the state high school league's website.