You hear stories like it all the time from other parts of the state: Games at all levels of play cancelled due to a lack of officials.

Sometimes, rescheduling games due to weather is the cause. Others, there just aren’t enough officials available for games already scheduled.

It’s a problem Rob Rude has been dealing with for some time now. Rude is well-versed in the ins and outs of officiating and assigning officials. He’s been an official for 35 years, and has officiated six different sports at the youth, high school and college level for nearly 30 years. He’s also a referee assignor, and has assigned referees in six sports (baseball, basketball, softball, football, volleyball, and soccer) for 16 years.

If you’ve been to an athletic event in Clermont County in the past, there’s a decent chance Rude was the one who assigned the officials. He’s the assignor for Eastern Cincinnati Conference softball and volleyball, Southern Buckeye Conference baseball and softball, and softball in the Cincinnati Hills League and the Cincinnati Metro Athletic Conference.

Rude also owns Diamond Pro Umpires, a company that focuses on assigning umpires for youth, college and adult baseball leagues. In addition, Rude is also the co-owner of World Champion Sports, where he helps assign umpires for local high schools. He said he got into the official assigning business thanks to his father.

“When I was growing up in Kings, they didn’t really have organized youth sports,” Rude said. “He really helped start Kings knothole baseball, Kings SAY Soccer and Kings youth basketball. I was around him while he was designing leagues, working on concession stands, organizing tournaments. I started coaching and officiating and helping them build schedules and assign officials. It’s been something I’ve been around for a long time.”

Rude said at one point he was in charge of assigning officials to softball games for 55 different high schools. Toss in other duties, like the Southwest Ohio Baseball League, and finding referees to work games can be complicated, especially since different levels of play require different things.

“The high school officials have to be OHSAA certified,” Rude said. “Usually they only want to go a certain geographic distance. You have to find guys who are a certain distance from the schools. You go out to the local associations and meet people. Fortunately, I’ve been around officiating and assigning long enough that I know a lot of the officials and the ADs and coaches.”

Currently, Rude is in charge of the pre-sport administration program at UC Clermont, where he compiled a research paper titled “The Baseball and Softball Umpire Crisis in Cincinnati.”

While Rude’s paper focuses on baseball and softball in particular, the trend is not limited to just the spring sports. That said, Rude noted there are some sports at the high school level that still have enough officials to cover the games.

Right now, there are enough officials in basketball and football to cover high school pretty solid,” Rude said. “Soccer, we’re short. Baseball and softball, we’re short. Volleyball is hit or miss.”

Rude said volleyball has had enough officials for the last few seasons. The bigger problems, according to Rude, lie in soccer, baseball and football, and those issues are magnified if weather forces rescheduling of games.

The numbers would seem to back up his statement. The OHSAA tracks the total number of officials for each sport throughout the state, and there were 4,248 baseball umpires in the 2010-2011 school year. In the 2017-2018 season, that number had dropped to 3,495, or a decrease of nearly 18 percent.

In soccer, the number of officials dropped at a smaller rate, from 1,424 to 1,345 (5.5 percent). Football lost 414 officials in that same span, a decrease of roughly 11 percent.

In his paper, Rude said that in the Cincinnati area alone, 80 new umpires have been certified over the last three years. However, he noted that most of those umpires have been certified for select games and not games at the high school level.

The numbers for softball were lower, with 69 new umpires in those three years. Rude said the total number of softball umpires on the World Champion Sports roster was 200 three years ago, and is now down to 171.

According to Rude, there are 719 umpires registered in the Southwest District, or roughly 20 percent of the state total. There are 400 softball umpires, 17 percent of the state total.

Other states are having the same problem. An Ohio University study showed that Oregon lost 12 percent of the total officials in the state over the last three years. Kansas had just 1,887 basketball officials in 2015, a decrease of 140 from two years prior.

While the decrease in officials is a problem in its own right, there could be another issue. Even if the number of referees currently required to staff games is met, there could be more games down the road.

The National Federation of State High School Associations (NFHS) conducts an annual participation survey. Back in the 2010-2011 school year, the number of total participants throughout the United States was 7,667,955. That number grew to 7,980,886 in the 2017-2018 campaign.

Ohio’s 2017-2018 number was 347,567, the fourth-highest total of any state. That’s an increase from the 328,430 total in 2010-2011.

“If you look at the trends statewide, sport participating is steady or increasing,” Rude said. “The number of officials is decreasing. The future doesn’t look good.”

This is the first in a two-part series on the declining number of high school sports officials. Coming Nov. 29: Why are officials leaving, and what can be done to bring them back?

Ohio has lost over 1,500 high school referees across all sports since the 2010-2011 school year, per data collected by the OHSAA.
https://www.clermontsun.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/web1_OfficialsChart.jpgOhio has lost over 1,500 high school referees across all sports since the 2010-2011 school year, per data collected by the OHSAA.

There are nearly 400 fewer football referees in 2017-2018 than there were in 2010-2011, according to data provided by the OHSAA.
https://www.clermontsun.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/web1_refChart.jpgThere are nearly 400 fewer football referees in 2017-2018 than there were in 2010-2011, according to data provided by the OHSAA.

A group of officials discuss a call during the Milford/Fairfield playoff game earlier this month.
https://www.clermontsun.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/web1_Refs2.jpgA group of officials discuss a call during the Milford/Fairfield playoff game earlier this month.
Decline in referees could problems for local athletic teams

By Garth Shanklin

Sports Editor