San-Joaquin referee shortage, leads to schedule change

PHOTO: Many referees have decided to retire early, negatively affecting the seasons of many high school sports.

By Sean Campbell

BlueDevilHUB.com Staff–

The Davis High baseball team practices hundreds of hours each year: fielding, hitting and conditioning. But often times when they arrive to the field for a game, no umpire is present. This was a common occurrence for both the freshman and J.V baseball teams last season.

“I have had many games without umpires. It is not enjoyable and is very frustrating,” sophomore baseball player Evan Lanier said. “Calls are less accurate and coaches have to step in and play the role of the umpire.”

This problem used to be unique to baseball, however, due to treatment by fans, coaches, athletes and the COVID-19 pandemic, many older referees have decided to retire early.

This has caused the problem to trickle down to football. “This year football is very short (on referees). So much so that we moved one game to a Thursday night in efforts to ensure that our future home games have officials,” DHS Athletic Director Jeff Lorenson said.

Due to this shortage each football team in the San-Joaquin section is forced to play one game on Thursday during the season. Through the efforts of Lorenson and others, each team in the Delta League is playing one of their preseason games on a Thursday in order to keep the other league games on Fridays.

The football team was forced to sacrifice some of their film time in order to get prepared for the game. This was all compounded by the heat wave that took place from Sep. 1-6 that impacted practices and game times even further.

“This game truly was groundbreaking, but in a bad way. It was the first time at least in my memory that a game was totally moved for a referee shortage,” varsity football coach Nicholas Garratt said.

Garratt however, was pleased with how the team avoided distractions and stuck to their gameplan which led to a 38-13 victory over Oakmont on Sept. 1.
In order to fix the problem, Lorenson believes that it is both the responsibility of sports fans to give back by becoming referees and of the coaches and players to be respectful of referees. “While the goal and desire is to ‘win’, treatment of officials should remain positive through triumph and defeat,” Lorenson said.