Stupid Assignors

For those of you who don't know what an assignor does, let me take a couple seconds to fill you in.

Contrary to ancient myth, officials do not just happen upon a game and figure since they have nothing better to do, they'll subject the teams, coaches and fans to horrors beyond imagination. Nope, someone else has to tell them to go there (to the game, that is).

That's what assignors do, tell officials what matches they are doing. Assignors receive game information from a variety of sources though typically it is from a league officer (preferably just one, who has all the information for the league). Then with this information, the assignor informs qualified officials (you may insert your oxymoron statement here) when and where to be.

This system works occasionally.

Today, not so much.

It's currently the first week of the spring high school season and after having most of the matches covered by officials prior to the season starting, several referees have given back their matches with little notice. As you can imagine this creates problems for the assignors as they must now reach into their bag of officials and magically pull out another official qualified to do the game (oh, if only such a magical bag existed).

Back to today (I am easily distracted by shiney things), I received a text message from a referee a couple days back wherein he stated he was quite busy with school and couldn't take on more assignments. As I had recently sent out an email request for help covering a couple of still open spots this week, I texted him back and stated I needed help this weekend, to which he agreed, being the weekend and all.

Yesterday, I sent out another request begging officials to help with a game today. I received another text from aforementioned referee asking about his assignments. I replied that tomorrow (today) was covered and needed him still on Saturday (the match in question was taken by another official before I received the text). I had neglected to look at the schedule before replying to his message. If I would have, I may have noticed he had an assignment today and may have guessed our conversation was not hitting on all cylinders.

(You must have seen this coming) I receive a phone call at 3.50pm today from the ARs on a match the said referee had been assigned, stating he was not there, they had called him and he had told the ARs, I had gotten someone else to cover the match for him. The match was to begin at 4pm. I called the referee back and we realized, finally, we had made a horrible mistake in our communications. However, he was currently stuck without a vehicle some 30 miles away from the game. After many frantic phone calls to other officials, I managed to reach someone (who hadn't been drinking) and could cover the match.

Is there a point to this story? Be nice to your assignors? Be clear when discussing things with simple-minded assignors? Assume your assignors have NO idea what you are talking about, ever? All of the above?

Regarding the podcast, I've been getting interest from local officials about participating and once this week is through (it's almost done...thankfully), I should start work on the meat and taters of the show.

Do call in if you have a story for us.