• 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.

• 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.

• 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.

• 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.

• 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.

• 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.

• 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.

• 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.

• 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.

• 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.

• 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.

• 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.

• Follow this link to view a gallery of playoff crew pictures: 2009 Playoff Pictures

• 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.

• 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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