Question's simple. Is it GameOfficials? Arbiter Sports? Email? And how do you like those assignment websites like GO and Arbiter? Could they be better? I'm curious to see how refs get their assigned games.
All of the above. Depends on the league... USsoccer Game officials for most US soccer assignments. Idk when they’ll start using stack sports. Arbiter for almost all college... 1 NISOA branch also uses a different website. Arbiter for ALL HS assignments. Youth- varies it’s mostly GO depending on the assignor. A couple local small assignors use text messages and emails. One guy makes excel spreadsheets. Amateur adult. It’s GO for college club. One assignor uses GO for our city league. I also work for another league in a bigger metro and they have their own system (it’s very dated) but he also uses text messages for assignments. I know a couple people who just send text messages and group chats. But those are mostly for UPSL, scrimmages between different teams from different leagues, unaffiliated etc. Arbiter I don’t really like. And game officials is the lesser of the two evils in my opinion. I wish US Soccer game officials would link to my regular game officials that way if I get an assignment in US Soccer all my other assignors will know I’m unavailable but that makes too much sense. Hell it be cool if arbiter and GO’s could link but both platforms have no incentive to do that. It would also be nicer if there was a function on arbiter where I can generate a team email... but now I’m just being nit picky. GO’s is cool cause it can let you block dates and put a reason and also show you’re available. I’m not sure how useful that is for assignors tho.
I like how Game Officials will copy the whole assignment to my calendar. Our North Georgia HS association uses a proprietary rig that I think one of the former board members wrote from scratch sometime in the previous century.
My local USSF assignor and local high school assignor pretty much exclusively uses Arbiter. Most of my college assignments also come through Arbiter. I do get some assignments through Game Officials as well for things outside my local USSF region. For games through a local rec center, I generally get a text message asking if I am available. My preference is Arbiter since I use that the most. I know that officials who do other sports like it because everything can get linked together.
Locally we have assignors who use game officials, a yahoo group and what we lovingly refer to as the Big Chief Tablet. That last one converts to text messages and emails. We are probably going to need to use Arbiter for high school because they've sold many of the high schools on the virtues of having someone else keep track of things for them.
The UI for both GO and arbiter are, to be frank, poor. Arbiter lists all your future games as a default. That’s better than GO, which defaults to only show you your games in the week you are in. So if you logically look on Saturday it’s not showing you your Monday game unless you click the month or the next week. Both have equally clumsy way of setting up your blocks. At least GO let’s you set when you are available, or when you aren’t. Arbiter only let’s you set when you aren’t, which if you are a busy person, is pretty obnoxious. Arbiter let’s you visualize what days are partially blocked vs completely blocked on the month view (pink vs red). GO doesn’t, which for me is a pain since I have lots of both and i have to click each day (or look at the list of blocks at the bottom) to see if I’ve got the whole block days right or not. GO has a payment function, which at least around here, almost no one uses. It is functional, but if you want to automatically have the money go to your bank account, there is a fee. So for me, both are very meh. And the fact that I have to use both for different leagues just doubles the meh.
Arbiter/Ref Pay charges a fee to automatically transfer your pay. You can choose to do so manually for free. I do not believe GoPay does that. At least none of the groups that I use GO with charge.
I, honestly, do think that would be better. If I want to see games that I've done already, I'll look at a report or the 'After Games' page. When I look at my schedule, I want to see what I have scheduled so I can plan my future, not if I look on a Sunday, what I did yesterday but not what I have tomorrow. A bigwig assignor that many people here would know has been trying to get me to work on an assigning system he is trying to get off the ground. I've demurred because I have a decent understanding of how complicated it will be to provide all of the features that GO and Arbiter have, not to mention my background is application programming and I have almost no UX/UI experience.
For high school in Iowa and Texas, we use arbiter. For club games, some assignors use email, and some use arbiter. Some use both depending on the league..
We use a local product called Soccer Central. The non-D1 & 2 college assignments, high school, youth and most adult leagues are all on Soccer Central. One button click to email your crew. Pay by direct deposit at no cost. $5 per payment if you don't use direct deposit. You have a monthly calendar where you show dates and times on each day that you are available. One click takes you to the next month. It also shows games you have already been assigned or accepted on each date. One click to print a game card, with all of the game information, including the phone numbers of your crew members, including the assessor/mentor, if any. As I understand it, supposedly working with USSF under another name to replace Game Officials. And one adult league uses paper availability and email of the assignment for each week. The assignor is in her 80's.
Coincidentally enough, I was just thinking I should put in the work to do the same thing. I think I have enough full-stack understanding to do the whole thing, but the time required would be interesting.
All of the above. Gameofficials for most US Soccer Arbiter for most college plus all HS Email for MBB league GotSoccer for a lot of State Cup games and National League Dash for some Indoor ZebraWeb for some ECSR games Text for MBB indoor league Sheets share file for NFPL I'm sure I'm missing something else. Sometimes it's hard to keep track. I do like the new Arbiter how it automatically populates my Google Calendar with games and events. Dash does the same thing. I wrote a macro where google Sheets does it for my calendar as well. I wish others did the same.
Jeez. So many. I'm thinking about just writing an assigning web app specifically for soccer that outshines GameOfficials and somewhat Arbiter. I know I can do it. Just need to know how much people hate GO and Arbiter. Haha.
In my experience a lot of people hate GO and Arbiter but can't really articulate what they want fixed. It's like people who boo Gary Bettman. At this people people don't even know why they're booing him.
I’d also talk to assignors/leagues about GO and Arbiter to get their feedback. I know some people HATE assigning with arbiter or/maybe GO’s. I forget which one. But either way they’ll be the ones integrating and paying for it. The referees truly are stuck with whatever the assignor uses. Many of us still use the systems simply Bc we want the games and have no choice.
I have been told that the filters that assignors can create and use on GO are much more robust than in Arbiter. Additionally, I know a number of assignors who think Arbiter is slower than GO. There is a referee rating system in Arbiter that, when set up and used properly, allows an assignor to automatically assign referees although it don't work so well for large groups. The feature(s) that I like/would like most are, 1-click export entire schedule to iCal file and an import of an iCal file to put blocks in, probably with a warning that you will only be blocked for the exact time in the event and not account for travel time.
GO for most Georgia and Alabama leagues Email for MOBA Group text for Opelika parks and rec Arbiter for Auburn parks and rec Email with Excel spreadsheet for most tournaments Though with my new position at work on Monday, it will be unknown if I can do the parks and rec games during the week or not. If I get off work early enough, I may just show up and see if they need me.
Lets be honest here. Assigning software is made to assign referees. The assignor is the user and client, not the referees. Assigning 5 games is easy and any method works. Assigning 100 games for a 2 day tournament is a different animal. Doing it for 1000 games a week is different than that. You want software that makes it easy to communicate with selected referees, to assign them as efficiently as possible and more importantly reassign the as quickly as possible when the SHTF and you lose fields or times change or some other act of nature happens. And then when all is said hopefully pay everyone out and unfortunately nowadays track that payment for the IRS. The person assigning refs should be able to easily add someone to the group and assign them immediately, allowing the new referee to complete their system registration on their own time. From an assigning standpoint, GO is an easier system to use than Arbiter. I can input assignments faster and more importantly change them faster and deal with new users much faster. As a referee I prefer the payment side of GO over RefPay. Its easier to manage.
Not sure if this is a thing assignors can set for their group in Arbiter (I’m only in 1 Arbiter group at the moment) but I can’t see who my crew members are until I accept the game. Definitely a big pet peeve of mine. GO always lets you see who you’re working with.
I think that’s a feature the assigning group can turn off and on. In a high school group I was in they allowed for us to see who we were assigned too. But another new group doesn’t.
I work games for 5 different assignors throughout the year on GO. I used to also be signed up with one on Arbiter. I dropped the Arbiter one because it was too much of a hassle to keep availability updated across the two platforms whenever I needed to update it or when I was assigned games.