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Tuesday, Jul. 29, 2008

Officials cry ‘foul' as fuel costs rise

At a Lexington basketball game last season, an officials' call drew the ire of one fan in the stands.

“Go back to Foot Locker,” the heckler yelled at the black-and-white-striped man with the whistle.

If gas prices keep going up, another part-time job might not be out of the question for high school officials in Kentucky.

The per-game rate for officials around the state has not increased, but the expense of traveling to the games for referees has.

“It creates a hardship,” basketball official assigning secretary Rick Chasteen said. “It's to the point where officials have to ask ‘Can I afford to officiate and how many nights can I officiate?'”

The KHSAA has not noticed a decline in officials so far despite gas prices hovering near $4 a gallon, said Larry Boucher, an assistant commissioner for the high school athletics governing body.

In fact, the number of officials for all sports is at an all-time high at more than 4,000.

Officials around Kentucky are paid a base rate for each game, but they do not receive any per-mile rate for their travel.

Each region has a policy board, consisting of individuals from member schools, that has the option of adding to that pre-set base amount to offset travel costs, said Boucher, who oversees officials.

In the 12th Region, where there might be 100 miles between schools, that policy board pays an extra $15 a game, Boucher said.

In the 6th and 7th regions of Louisville, the policy board might opt to pay an extra $5 a game because there is only about 25 miles from one school in the county to another.

“It's working pretty well and those regional policy boards have done a good job of addressing the travel needs of the officials,” Boucher said. “But this gas price increase has blown us all out of the water in the past year; whether we have been able to address it that quickly, I don't know.”

Chasteen, who oversees officials for the 10th and 11th regions, is in negotiations with his regional policy board. He said he hopes it will decide wisely and increase compensation for travel for the nearly 200 officials under his watch.

“We don't do it for the money,” Chasteen said of being an official, which is part-time work. “But you hope it doesn't cost you to do it.”

Chasteen acknowledges that the poor economy and the high price of fuel are hurting the school systems, but he still hopes his board will opt to increase the travel fee.

“Schools are strapped and I appreciate that, but there is a service provided by our officials that is necessary for the game,” he said. “It's kind of hard to play without us, whether we're good, bad or indifferent.”

To plead his case, Chasteen offered a lesson in geography.

The 10th and 11th region officials cover the largest overall territory statewide. It extends vertically from Silver Grove to Berea, which is 125 miles. Horizontally, his officials can be assigned anywhere from Maysville to Frankfort, which is 90 miles.

Last season, he and his assistant assigned 2,281 games.

“If my guy's got to go out 11 straight nights and officiate, he's going to fill his tank up five or six times,” Chasteen said. “We travel almost every night and when you're looking to fill your car up and it's taking $60 or $70 to fill up, that's the entire game fee at the varsity level.”

Unlike in football, basketball officials don't work in crews, so carpooling is out.

Nor is it available to soccer officials.

Like Chasteen's basketball region, the Central Kentucky Soccer Officials Association services a far-reaching territory over a multitude of miles.

“You could get $70 to be the center (official), but you're on the road for an hour or an hour and a half driving,” said Chad Collins, president of the CKSOA. “You could be spending half of your game fee on gas alone.”

Collins said he has some concerns that the added costs will drive some officials away. He didn't draw a parallel between the two, but he noted that the CKSOA added only two new referees this season to its roster of 80 persons.

Another issue is that Collins and many other soccer officials around the state are also licensed to referee college games, where they receive not only much larger payments but also travel rates of about 48 cents a mile.

The only mileage high school referees are paid is 30 cents a mile when they officiate post-season games.

“You're paying their bill,” assistant commissioner Julian Tackett said of the post-season rate. “They're not making any money on mileage and you're depreciating their car, but they're getting there.”

The post-season mileage rate did not increase this season, but Boucher said it is under discussion.

During the regular season, the pressure will shift to the assigners to make sure officials aren't always traveling long distances, Tackett said, before noting that “the difficulty there — from an officials' perspective — is the more times you see the same people, the more likely you are to have issues with a team.”

Soccer officials don't have the benefit of allowing some to travel less, Collins said.

“We can't even consider something like that in soccer because there are almost no referees in some places,” Collins said. “You can look at a county like Mercer County … and there's only a handful of officials. Without bringing in officials from Lexington, there's no way they'd be able to meet the obligations of the games that they have.”

There are no easy answers, all agreed, but the KHSAA says it is doing all it can to recruit and retain officials.

“We have created some incentive packages along the way,” Boucher said, such as reduced licensing fees for college students and free licensing for officials who have served high school sports for 25 or more years.

Most officials aren't in it for the money, Boucher noted. There are several upsides of being an official.

“It's work that's got so many attributes to it like staying in touch with the sports you love, contributing to the youth in the community, keeping things fair and the playing field level,” he said. “It offers things that are very attractive to a lot of people.”