Casey Comerford on Ref Shortage in Youth Sports
Casey Comerford
Ref Shortage in Youth Sports
Claims and stances
Transcript
- 0:00 Yeah, Connor, it's interesting you bring that up.
- 0:02 I think not a lot of people really think about that issue sometimes.
- 0:06 I'm gonna speak about it more from a baseball perspective, which is what I played growing up.
- 0:10 Um, and I do think it's a major issue.
- 0:12 Now the question is where do you get that money to you know fund to have more refs, umpires, whatever it may be, because then you could say, well, you have increased the cost to play these sports, but that could maybe some families then can't afford that extra money, less kids are playing youth sports, and I think youth sports are more important now more than ever.
- 0:31 So that's one question is saying where do you get the funding to get these these refs.
- 0:36 Um, but another thing is just how competitive these youth sports have become.
- 0:40 Um, now that you know they're putting a higher emphasis on sometimes those kind of leagues as opposed to even like high school games when it comes to playing in college.
- 0:49 So that makes the parents more competitive.
- 0:51 Um, you know, they start arguing to refs, it can lead to just nobody wants to even do that job because it's maybe not great pay, it's tough hours, it's on the weekends, and you're getting yelled at by parents the whole time.
- 1:03 So obviously who would want to do that?
- 1:04 But for my experience, playing baseball in Georgia over the summer, that's a brutal job.
- 1:09 I mean, you're working summer ball tournaments on turf fields in Georgia where it's north of 100 degrees in the summer, and the umpires are wearing, you know, umpire um uniform and it's hot for them.
- 1:22 Parents are frustrated on strike calls, you know, and I don't know, it's tough.
- 1:27 I can see why people maybe wouldn't want to be doing this job right now, especially if the pay's not great.
- 1:32 So I don't know.
- 1:34 Like the one thing that comes to mind is like, okay, well, you make teams pay more to get into these tournaments, and then you just take that extra money and maybe you pay the refs more because that would be obviously financial obligation or incentive for them to want to do these jobs.
- 1:47 But um, man, I don't really know what the answer is, but it's definitely a huge problem that I saw playing baseball, and um I think it's something that needs to get addressed now because I think youth sports is the one thing that is helping kids still bond together with friends, especially in such a digitalized world nowadays.
- 2:05 Um we need we need that to continue.
- 2:08 So, whatever the answer may be, whether it's soccer, baseball, football, I don't know, tennis, whatever it is, um, we need people doing those jobs.
- 2:18 So I think as a community we need to figure it out, and also be more lenient with the people who are working these jobs because it's tough.
- 2:25 I mean, these aren't professional referees.
- 2:27 Um, can't expect them to make the right call every time.
- 2:29 So I think it depends on how it all comes down to how do we treat these officials, how do we pay them more, make the hours not as bad, and just make it a better environment to work in.
- 2:38 And I think you'll see more people start to come out and work those jobs.