One assignor recently sent out the following post: Your request to be assigned games on a given date, this means you give me your AVAILABILITY. Once you have been assigned to a block of games, you must confirm those games at the required time. You are to arrive at the facility 15 minutes before your first game. Some of you choose different forms of transportation to get there, such as: Walk. Bicycle. Car, Train. Bus. When things change with the schedule it is very important that I get a hold of a live person, this is done via: Phone Calls. Text Calls. Messages direct through Horizon Web or E-Mails How you get there is up to you, It is very important that you respond to these calls in a timely manner, so as to avoid being taken off of games Pick up the phone. communication is very important. Here are the Six Criteria that I use when giving assignments, please read them carefully. 1) Ability –– Are you capable of handling a match at a given level? Your experience will quite often be a key factor here. 2) Availability –– I give priority for weekday shifts to those people who are available on weekends. 3) Reliability –– What is your track record? Are you always on time? Do you ever forget to show up? If I cannot count on you then don’t expect too many assignments. 4) Loyalty –– I understand that most referees work for various leagues throughout the year, but if indoor is a low priority for you, then you will be a lower priority to me. 5) Acceptability - How both the players and facility management perceive your ability must be a consideration here. Do you have a good rapport with the players? Are you aware that each facility’s management, for any of a number of reasons, has asked me not to schedule certain referees? This makes it more difficult to give you games as a result. 6) Seniority - How long have you been refereeing Indoor, certain referees have been doing games in certain facilities for many years, experience goes a long way. The bottom line is this –– there are many factors that go into assigning games each week. I suggest you think about why you might not be getting the number of assignments you might like before bothering me with your complaints. The answer probably lays somewhere in those six factors listed above. All referees are required to check in with the facility 10 to 15 minutes before there first game, This comes under the Reliability above.
I'm not sure what you're posting this for - were you asking for feedback? The sentence I've quoted is a little sharp, but it's certainly in line with the tone I've read from other assignors, and it smacks of a bit of burnout/a point where growing people has taken second fiddle. It happens. The rest of it seems like the blunt hammer of honesty.
Clearly the assignor has had repeated problems with referees showing up late to assignments or not showing at all. He has also been asked numerous times by referees why they aren't getting more or better games. I'd say this is a combination of vent, rant, and passing on useful information. The tone is very blunt, but some people need to be whacked with a blunt object before you can get their attention and this assignor wants to be clear. I'd also guess that "nicer" communication hasn't had the desired effect.
Most assignors have trouble filling all of their slots. Some let that get to them. There is one assignor who regularly sends out somewhat threatening emails to a wide audience. One of those could best be summarized as "You are dead to me". It didn't seem like the best way to get refs to work for him, but who knows.
The operative term I've read is "to be hit with a clue-by-four". And yes, some folks (in all walks of life) need one.
Two of the assignors I work games for use self assign. Emails like this are almost non-existant, normally one reminder of expectations at the beginning of the season. The other two assign games themselves and send several emails a season ranting about stuff. This year I worked 80% of my games for the self assign groups. Next year I expect that to be 90-100%.
How does self-assign work? So, essentially, anyone can work U-14B games all week? First come, first serve? What about those too late to get higher-level games? What about those who self-assign themselves U19B games as ref?
Of course, I can't speak for how self assign works in that system. In Soccer Central, the assignor gives everyone a rank as a referee and as an AR. The games are also given a rank on the same scale. If your rank is at or above the rank of the game, you can self assign, assuming there's no problem with a variety of other limitations the assignor can specify, such as how many other games you have already accepted that day, etc. To self assign, you just click on the open assignment on the site, it checks to see that you are within the parameters for that game and, bang, you're the referee or assistant referee for that game. If you don't have the rank for that game, you can one click a request to the assignor for that opening. If your assignor approves you for that, you will be notified that you need to accept the assignment on line. It can work very well, depending on how thoughtfully the assignor has considered the various details around that league or tournament. E.g. they may assign centers and leave AR's as self assign.
Arbiter cab be used similarly. And can be used with a combo of assigned and self assigned. (and assignors can overrule the self-assign parameters.)
Huh, in my area it’s the exact opposite. Self-assign guys send dozens of emails per week while the others send maybe 3-4 per season.
That's actually really nice. Interesting in how some associations or leagues are self-assign and others are not.
Essentially, I see it as a spectrum between crowd sourcing and assignors wanting personal power, in the belief that they know better which games are right for which people.
The challenge I see with self assigning are the referees who: 1. Have a much higher opinion of themselves than they are actually and picking games they shouldn't be taking. 2. The referee who wants to only do one team and assigns themselves to all of their games. I've seen both of these in our high school season and we are about to start again and shockingly one of the elite teams has NO games available 3 months ahead of time. (last year they had the same referee on 8 out of 10 games) He wasn't the best!
This sounds like a challenge with the high school assignor, not the concept of self-assigning. They should be both setting levels (and then it's their decision, and their risk, if the games are too high-level) and setting expectations (don't see any team more than twice or whatever is feasible/reasonable). Sorry that isn't happening for you!
The 2 local clubs that use self-assign have referee levels, limit the number of games you can self-assign in a day (the limit is raised when a tournament is hosted), and only make games available 2-3 weeks out. In other words you can't self-assign the entire season at once. I think it works best because each referee knows better than the assignor what games are most convenient for them (something that can change over time) without having to enter and constantly update detailed preferences and availability.
As some of you know, I'm 15. I started working with my first "real" assignor at age 12. He uses self assign, and my level for middles is currently set at U13 (he only assigns club), while a different assignor will give me the U18 and U19 State/P-Cup matches. So for me as a young referee this is a problem. The quality of referees for the self-assign guy is miles back from the others yet he won't let me do those games for him, and he wonders why I don't work matches for him anymore.
Wow. I'd say that, as an assignor, it *is* my job to know what games are right for which people. The USSF assignor training is pretty clear on exactly that. I work for the leagues/conferences/teams/schools that i assign for. My job is to make sure that the games are covered by a crew that it competent enough to manage the game at hand. A secondary objective is to develop referees, which means that I may put someone in a game that is above the level that they are used to, but if I do, I'd better put someone on the crew that can guide. provide feedback, and assist as needed. I actually consider self-assign to border on abrogation of duty. At that point, you're not thoughtfully considering who to assign where, you're just making sure that the slots are filled. It's not about power. I don't see that I have a lot of power as an assignor. In fact, if the referees knew it, they have all of the power, because I can be replaced fairly easily, but replacing all of the refs would be just about impossible. I have worked for assignors that use self-assign, and assignors that use regular assigning. My personal perspective is that if a game is set up for self-assign, I'm not particularly interested in reffing it.
I feel like self-assign is a cop out. The assignor is not actually doing their job. They are just inputting data into a system and then making it a free for all.
I would only suggest that if they assignor has 150 to 200 referees in the system, or more, most of whom are grade 8 teenagers who just graduated from the entry level class, there is no way the assignor can know their skill level. I am not saying that assignors do or should just give them the ability to self assign into the center of U-14 boys. That's what ranks are for. (And that's why reducing the grade 9, 8 and 7 system to "grassroots" is not helpful to assignors.) The assignor does have to give everyone a rank in self assign, so they can be matched up with an appropriate level of game, whether they do that explicitly or only implicitly. With self assign, they don't have to bother about whether this referee is doing games in Brownsville or Jonesburg. And, yes, the self assign system I'm familiar with can keep you from doing too many games with the same teams. That kind of assigning mistake can happen in manual systems anyway. I once did the same college team six times in the same season, five of them in the center. That wasn't self assigned. Someone I worked with this year commented that he was seeing the same team five times this season. RefGil, it may not be about power for you, and I applaud you for that, but assignor power is what got this thread started. We had an assignor who convinced a number of leagues that he had a somehow different set of officials for their games, that wouldn't make all of the mistakes that their current referees were supposedly making. And then he bullied some of the grade 5's into doing "his" games by offering them indoor games that he also assigned. Eventually, however, those guys retired or started doing fewer games and the up and comers had no respect for him, because he had bad mouthed them to the leagues for so long. He had no one good to do his games anymore.
I've worked with both systems. When I started, we had a meeting in a school gym where sheets of paper were spread out on a number of tables with all the games for the season. We penciled in what games we wanted. The downside of that was the veteran refs got to come in an hour or two before the newbies, and my sons' and my first season, instead of getting U8 games where we should have started, we had to choose from mostly U10s. Because at that time the U10 division had the worst parents. Not a great way to start. Of course the assignor could change the assignments - that's why it was done in pencil. When a second-season ref signed up for every U14 and U16 game on a weekend, she'd erase them. Uncovered games were sent out on emails. Later we put in our availability and the assignor would slot us in. Downside of that was that sometimes the assignor would want you to do a block of 3 or 4 games in a row, and I only wanted 2, so I'd not get some games. Regarding Patrick's point of an assignor not knowing 150 newbie or nearly-newbie teen refs, the result would be the same no matter what system was used. Either the assignor would select from the eager young warm body pool to low-level games, or they would self-assign to those same game levels allowed to them. Works either way. Edit: Self-assigning falls apart if the ref has no integrity; assignor doing it falls apart if the assignor has no integrity. Either one can work either way if everyone does what's right.
What really worked for me was my first year doing high school, which was my first year as a referee. The assignor's computer had a hard drive crash a week before he was supposed to hand out the assignments. So, at the end of the pre-season meeting, we stood in line and he told us what games he needed covered. I ended up being R1 on a boys varsity dual, the first dual I had ever seen, much less officiated, between two teams that were both ranked in the top 10 in the state at the time. If I'd been father back in line? Maybe a small schools' girls game as AR2.