Within the last years the number of referees willing and able to officiate have been decreasing.
According to The Sport Journal“In 2018, the Michigan High School Athletic Association reported that the amount of referees available dropped from 12,400 to around 10,000 over the previous decade.”
There are many theories about why this decline has happened. Covid 19 put many referees out of work due to sports being paused mid-season, so many conclude this as the reason. According to The Sport Journal, the pandemic played a big role in the beginning of this decline, but now not only is youth of refspart of the issue, but the parents’ and fans’ crazy tempers could be to blame as well.
The article states, “Parents being so financially invested has caused an explosion of verbal abuse or threats toward officials from parents”.
In effort to combat this, many schools have been offering sports officiating courses, and now SCHS will too. In 2022 Jeremy Middendorf, a PE teacher at St. Charles West, proposed the idea of this course. After writing the curriculum and running a test trial at SCW this last school year, it is offered as an official course for next school year.
“That is one of the reasons [referee shortage], the other reason is that some other schools around the area have it… we just thought that it would be something fun to incorporate in the curriculum,” said SCHS PE teacher Abby Schultehenrich.
There is no current assigned teacher to the course yet, but with Coach Foster retiring, the school is looking to hire in a new PE teacher. The officiating course is a semester-long course fee-based and a student may obtain their officiating certification through this class.
