2009 in Review
(revised 06/28/10)
| MCFOA Changes and
Additions in 2009: |
- Following the uncertain economic climate of 2008, we hadn't expected
too much from our 2009 "Marketing" initiatives. Nevertheless, we did
have one notable success on this front in 2009. One of our crews was
featured in a Gwinnett Daily Post feature, both in the print version of the
paper and on-line via their web site. This feature covered our pre-game
preparation, how we called the game and interacted with both teams and
coaching staffs and included interviews with each crew member. We
assigned a "senior crew" to this game between Parkview and Central
Gwinnett so that we'd hopefully give lots of interesting insights into
our "business." While this coverage does not necessarily
suggest we'll have similar success in promoting the organization to the
outside world in the future, it does suggest that interest in high school football
remains high in the area - even in a lingering recession. That is good
news for us and for the schools we serve.
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- We held our regular "Monday" meeting schedule to 12
meetings for 2009. This allowed us to continue to help members use more
of their time for their personal
lives without compromising on the content of our training sessions. Much
of this was made possible by use of TheArbiter since 2008 for booking
assignments; we've
found that booking electronically saves time for all involved and
decreases the number of no-shows we've suffered in the past and, of
course, has eliminated altogether the need to spend time in meetings
handing out game assignments.
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- As mentioned above, 2009 was our 2nd season of using TheArbiter (now
renamed ArbiterSports) as our booking medium. We've continued to expand our
knowledge of the inner workings of this software; we plan to continue to
expand this knowledge and use of features available in this package for
2010.
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- After a big year on the recruiting front in 2008, our membership remained constant for 2009. We lost a few veterans to retirement
and transfer. We picked up a few transfers and new recruits to just
about perfectly balance our membership rolls by count. Perhaps more
important to us was the overall improvement of the quality of our work
between 2008 and 2009. In part, this had to do with several of our
"younger" officials achieving GHSA Approved rank as well as several also
moving up from Approved to Certified while our Registered ranks thinned
at the top with the promotions but filled at the bottom with some really
high quality recruits. There is no guarantee that we can sustain this
type of growth going forward, but it is a nearly ideal pattern of growth
for us.
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- In line with the successful recruitment of high-quality new officials
in the past few years, we continued the mixing of officials on different
crews during the regular season. Once again, this allowed us to
continue our historical pattern of working younger officials into the Friday night mix faster than
is generally done in most other associations. Of course this can cut
against us in terms of synergy between members of "regular crews" when
it comes to the playoffs. But so far, this mixing of crews has worked
very well in the regular season. Whatever else we do in regards to
strengthening for the post-season, we will make every effort to get
talented young officials on the field as quickly as their talent will
let them in the regular season.
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- With the continued growth in population and schools in the geography
of the Yellow River valley and surrounding territory, we obtained
more games in the biggest classification locally, 8-AAAAA. For 2009 we
increased from 8 games to 10 in this region, alone. And while we didn't
have to travel to as many schools outside this area as in 2008, we did
maintain a healthy schedule of "travel" games for 2009. We expect to
continue to offer to travel occasionally in the regular season to help GHSA and neighboring associations balance the schedule as evenly as
possible between local associations; this is good for all associations
and for high school football in general.
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| Regular Season Games: |
- Varsity: We did 89 regular season GHSA games over the course of an
11-week-long period; all used 6-man on-field crews plus an
ECO except for 2 games where we used the experimental 7-Man mechanic
authorized by GHSA for 2009. This put us back even with the number of
regular season game than we worked in 2007.
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- Sub-Varsity: We worked a total of 139 games (2 more than in 2008), all of
which we successfully covered with 4-man crews. This was done over the course of a
9-week-long season. As in 2008, we had a strong season here with very
few problems due to weather and the rescheduling that flows from major
weather problems. The only significant problems we had were in the
NewRock middle school league. These stemmed from an initial problem with
the schedule as we received it and the unfamiliarity of our historical
agreements by new-to-the-job ADs at several of the participating
schools. With good will on all sides, these problems were quickly worked
out; and we wound up with a very good season worked for all of our
contracted schools at the sub-varsity level.
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| GHSA Playoff Games: |
- First Round - 4 games: AAAA Southwest DeKalb vs Northwest Whitfield -
Reed; AAAA Clarke Central vs Mays - Highbaugh; A Holy Innocents vs
Social Circle - Camp; A Darlington vs Warren County - Rice
- This compared to 6 games in the first round in 2006; 5 games in each of the years: 2002, 2003, 2004,
2005 & 2007 and 4 games in 2008.
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- Second Round - 2 games: AAAA Apalachee vs Marist - Rice; AAA Baldwin
vs Cairo - Reed.
- This compared to 3 games in 2006 & 2007 and 2 games in the second round in each of the years: 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005
& 2008.
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- Third Round - 1 game: AAA Gainesville vs Cairo - Reed
- This compared to 1 game in the third round in and 2002, 2003, 2006, 2007
& 2008
and no games in the years 2004 & 2005.
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- We handled 3 LESS total playoff games in 2009 compared to 2007 but
the same number as in 2008. This
number of playoff assignments continued a trend in the wrong direction.
Once again we were severely limited in our 1st round playoff potential
by the number of people who were playoff qualified by position. Camp
attendance continued to be the most obvious constraining factor with
some normally dual-position-qualified people only qualifying at one
position as distant second factor contributing to this problem. In the
numbers game that is related to the single-elimination tournament format
of the playoffs, having more people playoff qualified for 1st round
games has a ripple effect all the way through the entire playoff
schedule.
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| Miscellaneous Statistics and
Other "Stuff": |
- We had a total membership of 83 officials as of the end of the season
in ArbiterSports. This is almost exactly average size for the 23 GHSA-sanctioned
local officiating associations (one new association was added by the
state in 2009) and is level with our membership for 2008.
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| Elected to the MCFOA Board
for New 2-year Terms (2010-2011): |
- President, Frank Reed
Booking Agent, T.C. Candis
Treasurer, John Register
Secretary, Jack Henderson
- Please note: We reorganized ourselves from a by-laws point of view to create
separate Secretary and Treasurer positions and to eliminate the
"internal" and "external" Secretary positions previously called for. The
membership agreed with the board's recommendations on these points, and
the elections conducted at year's end reflected this new organization.
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