Who will ref the games? High school sports in SLO County face ‘dire situation’

Earlier this season, fans packed Greyhound Memorial Stadium on a chilly fall evening to take in a football game between Atascadero and Paso Robles.

It was the latest edition of a classic rivalry, but something new was occurring on the field.

Bobby Kennedy, a longtime referee and the Los Padres Officials Association lead for the football unit, wore a white crew chief hat with his pinstripe uniform. He was the lead official over four others that night who collectively had less experience than him.

The staffing level for the game was an example of a growing problem in Central Coast high school sports: a shortage of qualified officials.

Typically, aspiring referees start at the recreation and youth levels before moving to freshman and junior varsity. After getting more experience, some officials are placed in varsity games.

However, out of sheer need, Kennedy instituted a training program to advance new football officials more quickly and get them used to the varsity level. This practice has become necessary due to the shrinking number of officials in the area.

The shortage goes beyond football and impacts nearly every Central Coast Athletic Association high school sport, as well as programs and schools nationwide.

“We’re getting close to a very dire situation,” Kennedy said. “If we don’t start seeing more people become officials, there might be a point in time where high school athletics becomes a club sport because we can’t support them as officials.”

The Los Padres Officials Association has seen its number of referees fall by nearly a third since 2010, according to a Tribune article at the time, from 92 then to 65 today. Those referees cover all boys and girls sports throughout the year.

Kennedy says the association adds about six to eight new members annually. Still, it struggles with retention due to career changes, retirement and poor sportsmanship by coaches and fans, among other common reasons.

A nationwide problem

The shortage of officials isn’t unique to San Luis Obispo County. In 2022, the National Federation of State High School Associations found that 50,000 referees had discontinued their work since the 2018-19 season.

One cause is the rising age of officials.

In 2023, the National Association of Sports Officials surveyed 35,183 sports officials from all 50 states and the District of Columbia and found that the average age rose from 53.29 to 57.68 between 2017 and 2023.

Kennedy and other experienced referees, such as Jimmy Gin, agree that the pandemic accelerated the shortage.

“We are an aging population,” Gin said. Many officials on the verge of retiring decided to do so for good during the pandemic.

Regarding sportsmanship impacting people’s desire to stay, 68% said it has worsened, 21% said there has been no change, and 10% said it has been better.

As for officials’ safety, 50% of respondents said they’ve feared for their safety at some point due to conduct around the game. Some 12% of officials reported they’ve been physically assaulted during a sporting event.

Gin, a longtime referee in football, wrestling and track and field, said poor sportsmanship from spectators and coaches has contributed to officials leaving.

“We’ve seen this dwindling of officials over the years, and we’ve hated to see it,” Gin said.

While there have been cases of officials in the Los Padres Officials Association leaving due to poor sportsmanship experiences, Kennedy doesn’t believe it has been a huge problem at high school games on the Central Coast.

“I really don’t think we have problems with that at our high school level,” Kennedy said. You don’t see a lot of stuff that happens that would dictate that in our area, which is kind of unique. We’re pretty fortunate in this area.”

Central Coast Athletic Association secretary and Morro Bay Athletic Director Tyler Hoyt said that no meeting of the local athletic directors goes by without someone bringing up the topic of a referee shortage.

When Morro Bay hosted its California Invitational Tournament for wrestling last year, it had to bring in out-of-area officials and put them up in hotels.

“We end up paying to make it all happen for our student-athletes,” Hoyt said.

Morro Bay was forced to bring in an outside officiating crew for a football game this season because the local officials didn’t have the numbers to cover it.

“We told our local groups, ‘Hey, this isn’t us trying to go around you,’” Hoyt said. “We’re trying to maintain having games on Friday night.”

Local referees love what they do

Wrestling is one sport that the shortage has hard hit. While several schools are adding girls’ programs, the number of wrestling referees has shrunk to around 13, according to Doug Perrin, the leader of the wrestling unit.

Perrin noted that he, Gin and another veteran official, Ernie Del Rio, are over 70 years old. The next two most experienced members are in their 60s.

“The scary thing from my perspective is if we retire, the rest of the guys in the association might say, ‘We aren’t doing this anymore,’” Perrin said.

Gin, Perrin and Del Rio have been wrestling officials for 48 years. They travel together to tournaments and play a large administrative role in training other officials and scheduling matches.

Gin says he would prefer moving to a senior adviser position and reducing his refereeing load at this point in his career. Instead, the opposite has happened. He says he’s never worked this much wrestling in recent years, because they “don’t have anyone else.”

For Perrin, he appreciates the “camaraderie with a lot of the coaches, the camaraderie with referees.”

“I really like being on the mat and refereeing,” Perrin said. “It’s fun for me. It’s just a passion for the sport. I can’t imagine not having it in my life anymore.”

Gin added that in addition to bonding with other officials, he likes watching standout athletes who eventually move on to becoming Olympic or other high-level athletes.

“It’s very rewarding and very fulfilling for me especially after I’ve stepped off and say ‘Hey, I did a good job,’” Gin said.

What’s the pitch to new referees?

David Owens has officiated and led the association’s baseball, volleyball and softball units. He started when his children played Little League ball and there weren’t enough officials at the time.

Owens helped to officiate games when he wasn’t coaching. Eventually, when his kids were done playing, he didn’t want to be done with baseball or softball.

“I just kept going, and eventually somebody saw me and decided I should do high school,” Owens said. After working at the high school level, he worked his way up to the Division II level in college.

He believes a similar route to what he took could be a way to get more people involved.

“We’re out actively recruiting at the recreational level,” Owens said. “We’re seeing guys that may be raw in talent, but they had some talent and had the right attitude. And then we were inclusive. We had guys who had never done high school before getting invited to work playoffs.”

According to Owens, they can recruit two types of referees. Some are in it for the passion for the sport, while others need the money.

However, Owens, who owns Village Center Dry Cleaners in Morro Bay, believes the pay for officials hasn’t kept up with inflation. SLO County is pretty spread out, and at times the cost of making a round trip in terms of gas and time doesn’t make financial sense for some.

“I travel from Morro Bay to go do a game in Shandon and come back, and it’s two hours of my time and a little over 100 miles,” Owens said.

If a smaller school only has one team versus a junior varsity and varsity team, he will also make less money for going out.

What the future holds

Hoyt says they are “trying to solve a cultural problem to some extent.”

“There are parts of it that we’re in somewhat control over like within the confines of our own campuses and our own area, but at a more systemic level, there’s a lot of parts and pieces at play here that yield this shortage.”

According to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, jobs that are fully in-person have struggled with retention post-pandemic. That trend has hit the referee industry hard due to its rising age.

However, the Los Padres Association has looked at creative solutions to stem the problem. With the rise of girls flag football in the county, the association has recruited students to referee the games. All the officials need to be at least 16 years old.

“We’re seeing that as a way to promote and get to a whole different audience of people,” Kennedy said.

The Central Section approved their initiative for this season.

The baseball unit has seen an opposite trend, where older people have stepped up.

“What we’re seeing is there’s a fairly large amount of people who are older coming out,” Owen said. “We have a guy who does softball who is 79 years old. There’s a couple 70-year-olds in the baseball unit, and I know there’s a bunch of them in volleyball because volleyball is one of those sports where it’s not physically demanding.”

While these unconventional measures are helping in the short term, the association still needs more assistance.

“I’m optimistic that we will get through this and then our officials associations and people like Doug and Jimmy and Bobby who are getting up there in age (can) look around at the legacy that they intend to leave,” Hoyt said. “They don’t want to see high school sports in this bind. It’s something that I think they take deeply personally, to try to leave good officials behind as they move on in life.”

He doesn’t want it to come to this, but in a worse case, Hoyt said there may come a time where games will be canceled or game times moved, which may prompt parents and the community to rally behind the cause.

“The concept of education-based athletics and having schools hosting sports or athletic events and teams and providing that opportunity is a very uniquely American institution,” Hoyt said. “It’s not something that is happening around the world.”

For more information on how to become a referee, visit the website at www.lpfoa.org.

This story was originally published November 15, 2024 at 5:00 AM.