How to assign referees fairly across a season

Officials rarely expect the same number of games as everyone else. They want to understand why they got what they got.

An official with fewer games than a colleague usually can’t tell whether that reflects their availability, their level, an unspoken judgment about their ability, or nothing at all. The uncertainty is what turns a schedule into a complaint.

So keep a record of your decisions and the reasons for them. It makes them much easier to explain.

Work through these in a fixed order. It makes assigning faster and the results easier to explain.

Hard — these eliminate candidates

• Availability, including the ceiling they gave you. Someone who said two games a weekend shouldn’t get a third, even if they are free.
• Level and certification. What the game requires, and what they hold.
• Conflict of interest.Their child’s team, their old club, the team they coach at another age group. Ask about this at registration, since people rarely mention it later.
• Physical possibility.A 9:00 that runs to 10:45 and an 11:00 across town can’t both be covered on time.

Soft — these rank the survivors

• Workload so far. Both directions: who is short, and who is heading for a fifteenth consecutive Saturday.
• Development. Whether this game teaches them something, and whether they will have support in it.
• Travel. Distance, and whether the day can be built as one trip rather than three.
• Variety.The same official at the same club six times in a row can wear on the club’s trust in the officiating.

“Games this season” is the obvious measure, but it misses a lot. Six under-10 games at one local complex and six varsity games at six different venues are the same count and very different loads.

What is worth tracking separately:

• Games, by level. Officials compare themselves on the competitive games, so count those separately.
• Days worked. Someone with three games on one Saturday has had one day out. Someone with three games across three weekends has had three.
• Distance, roughly. A tally of long trips is enough. Nobody needs mileage.
• Unsociable slots. The 8am Sunday and the Friday under lights. Track who takes them, because those are the ones people remember doing more than their share of.

Sorting officials into levels and assigning strictly within them is easy to defend, but newer officials never get the games that would help them move up.

Two things work better:

• Stretch assignments with support. Put the newer official one level up, on a crew with an experienced colleague, rather than alone at a quiet game one level down.
• Give the difficult games to experienced officials.Rivalry games, deciders and anything with history aren’t the place to develop someone. Officials generally accept this when you say it is the policy.

Also watch for the reverse problem: your three most capable officials taking every hard game, every week, until they burn out.

Nobody sets out to give one official nine games in two weeks. It happens because you assign a weekend at a time, and a single weekend doesn’t show the pattern.

Three simple checks:

• Ask for a ceiling in advance and treat it as a firm limit.
• Keep the running count where you assign, not in a report you run afterwards. If you have to go and look it up, you probably won’t at 10pm on a Tuesday.
• Look at a month at a time, even briefly. Fifteen Saturdays in a row is easy to miss one weekend at a time.

Some officials accept within the hour, arrive early and have never cancelled. Others reply on Friday, sometimes. Reliability affects assigning in most organizations, and it is reasonable that it does. The question is how.

• Reasonable: giving an important game, where a no-show would be serious, to someone with a track record.
• Reasonable: not giving a fourth chance to someone who has cancelled on the morning three times.
• Not reasonable:quietly halving someone’s games because of a reliability judgment you have never told them about.

If reliability affects who gets games, say so in your policy, and tell the official before their games change rather than after they notice. “You’ve cancelled late twice, so I’m going to be careful with your games for a few weeks” gives them a chance to fix it. Officials who are quietly given fewer games often just leave. More on what brings officials back in how to recruit and keep referees.

Explaining every assignment would take too long and invite negotiation on each one. Three things are enough:

• Publish the policy, once. A short note before the season saying what drives assignment — availability first, then level, then spread, and that difficult games go to experienced officials. Half a page answers many questions before they are asked.
• Keep the record. Who was assigned what, when they were told, and what they said. A record settles most disputes, and sometimes it shows the complaint was right.
• Answer the individual question directly.“Why did I only get four games in October?” deserves a real answer, and usually there is one: you were unavailable for three weekends, or you were third in line for the two varsity games. Avoid “it just worked out that way”.

Be skeptical of software that promises to assign fairly for you. Fair assigning depends on things no database holds: who is coming back from an injury, who had a rough game at that club last month, who is ready for a step up.

Software helps with the record-keeping: current game counts, the roster next to the games, and a history of what was sent and what came back.

Ref Grid doesn’t assign anyone for youand has no fairness scoring. Each official’s record shows their upcoming and completed games and how often they accept. It warns you when someone already has an overlapping game, and it keeps the history of assignments and replies. The decisions are yours.

More on how that works: sports officials scheduling software.