Aging officials and low pay contribute to sports referee crisis

Players, coaches, fans — all are integral parts of a sports contest, but a key component often overlooked is the referee. As one Vermont baseball umpire, Paul Brock, put it, “Without the officials, the games won’t go on,” a blunt reminder as New Hampshire and Vermont grapple with an ongoing shortage of officials.

A 2024-2025 survey by the National Federation of State High School Associations, issued last September, indicated that the national high school officiating ranks were up 8% since a 2018-2019 survey.

Despite that, local assigners, athletic directors and officials themselves say there’s a growing scarcity of rule enforcers for both high school sports and youth levels.

Katie Hopp, an assigner for girls lacrosse and field hockey in Vermont, estimated that her sports have had about 30% fewer officials in recent years.

One whopping factor in the shortage, which Hopp and others indicated was across the board in local sports, was COVID. The national federation’s national data estimated that about 50,000 officials left the profession during the pandemic.

“I think we really started to see it after COVID, when a lot of people dropped off — they realized that there was more to life than officiating,” she said.

While a global pandemic can certainly throw a wrench into things, there are multiple factors to consider in pinpointing how officiating has gotten to this point.

A large element is age.

The National Officiating Survey, which is billed as the “most comprehensive survey ever completed in the history of the officiating industry,” queried more than 35,000 officials at all levels nationwide on several aspects of the job in 2023.

The average age of respondents nationally was about 57 years. The responses, when pared down to just New Hampshire and Vermont participants, jump to 60.5 years old — underscoring a problem several in the field have pointed out.

“The association (New Hampshire Softball Umpires Association) is aging,” said Norman LaFrenier, an assigner for softball in New Hampshire.

“We have umpires that are at an age now where they might only do two games a day, where they might have done four before, or maybe just two games a week even, and travel is limited because some of them probably have trouble driving at night,” he said.

While Brock, a South Royalton native, agreed that officials aging out is an issue, he said the behavior of spectators, coaches and players is another issue that should be considered.

“I think there’s quite a bit of official abuse,” said Brock, who umpired about 20 years ago, did not do so as much while his children were growing up, and returned to the officiating ranks around 2021.

The National Officiating Survey polled participants about their views on changes in sportsmanship and the treatment of officials.

About 60 percent of respondents in New Hampshire and Vermont in 2023 indicated that sportsmanship was getting worse. Moreover, 53% of those same respondents thought officials were treated unfairly by players, 72% felt that way about coaches, and nearly 87% felt that way about spectators.

“I think guys get tired of that,” Brock said.

As it is with most things in life, money is a driving force.

Wes Stocken, a 2022 graduate of Hanover High, who has been an umpire for nine years, and has done so in several states across the country in both baseball and softball. While he enjoys the hobby, he acknowledged the pay won’t exactly knock your socks off.

“High school and below — generally, the most you can make off of one game is $126, assuming that there is not a rainout that day. … A lot of retired folks are the majority of referees across all sports, and, in my opinion, it’s because the most you can make is around $100 a day,” he said.

Stocken also emphasized he has seen a greater shortage at the youth levels of baseball, where the pay is even lower pay — about $60.

Brock echoed that view, saying, “They have increased pay a little bit across the board, but it’s not enough, I think, to entice people to jump into it.”

Not to mention, given the country’s gasoline prices lately, it’s a tough sell for officials to travel.

“I’ll go up to Kimball Union twice this year, or to Plymouth, and other guys will do the same, and I’ll be honest with you, guys are starting to look at it with a little more of a jaundiced eye when the gas prices are like what they are,” said Bill Ball, an assigner for boys lacrosse in New Hampshire.

The impacts of the shortage are starting to show up at local high schools.

“We’ve had a few games here and there over the last few years where we’ve been unable to reschedule a game for a date that we wanted to because there were just no officials available,” said Stephen Stebbins, the Mascoma High School athletic director.

The issues with rescheduling games have also been felt at Hartford High School, said Athletic Director Jeff Moreno.

“It used to be, you picked a common date with your opponent and you ordered your bus and you put it out to the officials and it would just get gobbled up, but now there’s no bus drivers, there’s no officials, so you actually have to ask the bus folks and the officials first what dates work for them and then hope the opposing school has one of those dates in common,” he said.

“It’s like you’re trying to create this Venn diagram of the other school, the buses, and the officials, and usually those dates don’t line up great, so you’re probably sending your team on the road for a long bus ride, two, maybe three nights in a row, or you’re potentially playing four times in a week,” Moreno said.

Both athletic directors expressed fear about what the shortage could mean down the road.

Moreno said a potential outcome could be fewer games due to the inability to fill schedules. For example, he said field hockey games are already restricted to certain days of the week, with a limited number of games per day.

Stebbins shared similar concerns — rescheduling issues, and sports that need multiple officials getting only one, which could worsen the quality of officiating and potentially worsen problems with sportsmanship.

“I do believe that there is a shortage and I think it’s only going to get worse over the next several years,” Stebbins said.

While schools and athletes are feeling the effects of the shortage, the officials themselves and the quality of the field product are, too.

“Officials are tired,” Hopp said. “Officials are working more games than they ever have in the past, and I think sometimes, as much as people don’t want to admit they’re tired, the quality of officiating can sometimes be affected.”

As for solutions, the main theme was getting younger individuals involved.

For example, Ball emphasized continuing outreach efforts for college and high school kids that he and his sport have been involved with.

LaFrenier, who is also part of USA Softball of New Hampshire, said the association runs clinics where high school students learn more about umpiring.

“It’s a great way to connect with the community, and I think it provides a great purpose for young children to focus their free time on that is outdoors and not looking at video games or TikTok or ChatGPT,” Stocken said.

Additionally, he suggested it should be easier to get into officiating.

“When you Google ‘Upper Valley umpiring,’ ideally that should bring you — whether it’s AI or a website or something — it should bring you to the email address of who to contact to get games,” Stocken said.

Ultimately, for Hopp, it comes down to being willing to give back and putting the role in some perspective.

“It doesn’t have to be a full-time job — you can just be available two days a week — it’s not something that has to be an everyday thing,” she said.

The NHIAA and the VPA both share resources for becoming an official on their respective websites: www.nhiaa.org/related-links/officials-links and vpaonline.org/athletics/vt-sports-officials-association.

“It hasn’t been horrible yet. That being said, I am concerned that in the next five to 10 years it’s going to be really bad,” Stebbins said.