• Our "Marketing" initiatives for 2010 were quite different from those we had in 2009. We continued long established programs of soliciting feedback from the teams we serve via our crew evaluation process on this web site, and we purchased ball-point pens with Multi-County information to be given away to head coaches during pre-game meetings between the Referees & Umpires and Head Coaches. But the biggest change we had was in shooting videos of our "top 3" crews at or near season's end. These were reviewed and eventually both our "top 2" crews had their videos submitted to GHSA for evaluation by the newly-established video review committee (GHSA limited submissions to 2 crews per association). That committee selected one of our crews as a semi-final crew.

• We held our regular "Monday" meeting schedule to 12 meetings for 2010. 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 ArbiterSports (formerly 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'd suffered in the past and, of course, has eliminated altogether the need to spend time in meetings handing out game assignments.

• 2010 was our 3rd season of using ArbiterSports as our booking medium. This package has simplified and enhanced our booking and booking-related capabilities since we first placed it into service. This year the most visible change was in the use of game numbers. All game numbers were keyed to the level of competition so that by simply looking at a the game number you could tell what level of play was involved. This was designed to enhance our behind-the-scenes accounting and allocation of funds to officials at year's end.

• Our membership fell off slightly in 2010, mostly due to several people's work schedules having changed (which was in-turn at least partially a result from the continuing economic downturn). We also lost a few veterans to retirement and transfer. By season's end we had 81 officials on our active roster; 78 of whom were able to work scheduled games for us. We once again had a highly successful year in recruiting officials into the group. While the count wasn't especially high, we maintained the recent trend of attracting generally high-quality individuals into the group. By year's end, even a few of our 1st year officials had earned their way onto a varsity field. This helped us maintain our long-term commitment to getting qualified people onto the field as early as possible in their careers, and it helped us field an above average number of crews on Friday nights (roughly 1 more crew per week) compared to recent years.

• 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.

• GHSA continued to assign us most of the same schools' contracts  as we'd had in 2009. There were a few changes, but overall we continued to serve many familiar programs compared to the past few years. With the continued growth in population and schools in the geography of the Yellow River valley and surrounding territory, we worked 15 home games in 7-AAAAA, 14 in 8-AAAA, 12 in 4-AAA, 10 in 5-A and 9 in 8-AAAAA - our 5 most populous regions by game count and 62.5% (5 out of every 8) of our total regular season games. We also continued to do occasional "travel" games in the regular season to help GHSA balance the schedule between associations; we did individual games in Macon, Perry, Milledgeville, Griffin and Pike County as well as a region "play-in" game at Buford under the banner of schedule balancing.

• Varsity: We did 96 regular season GHSA games over the course of an 11-week-long period; all used 6-man on-field crews plus an ECO. Games done for Lithonia and Newton also included use of an MCFOA chain crew. This was 7 more games than we worked in the regular season last year. This was a difficult season in which to provide high quality crews to each game. Booking those games must have really been "fun" for T.C. Candis on some Fridays. Nevertheless, he did manage to come up with qualified crews for each game. The high performance of these thrown-together crews was a good testimonial for the quality of our training efforts in recent years.

• Sub-Varsity: We worked a total of 119 games (20 less than in 2009), 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 and 2009, we had a strong season here with very few problems due to weather and the rescheduling that flows from major weather problems. The significant drop off in number of games worked had to do with the absence of the NewRock middle school league for 2010. They cancelled their schedule for the year due to economic considerations.

• All playoff games used 6-man on-field crews along with an ECO. In the 1st round, we also provided 3-man chain crews for a total crew size of 10 men. In 2nd and subsequent rounds, we used 4-man chain crews for a total crew size of 11 men.

• First Round - 5 games: AAAAA Grayson vs North Forsyth - Rice; AAAA Pope vs Chattahoochee - Camp; A Trion vs George Walton - Reed; AA Appling County vs Putnam County - King;  Lovett vs Elbert County - Henderson.
• 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 both 2008 & 2009.

• Second Round - 2 games: AAA Woodward Academy vs Monroe Area - Reed; AA Lovett vs Dade County - Rice.
• 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 & 2009.

• Third Round - 1 game: AAAA Ware County vs Tucker - Rice.
• This compared to 1 game in the third round in and 2002, 2003, 2006, 2007, 2008 & 2009 and no games in the years 2004 & 2005.

• Fourth Round - 1 game: AA Lovett vs Buford - Rice.
• This compared to no games in each of the past 3 years and 1 game worked during the last year semi-final games were held in the Georgia Dome (2007).

• We handled 1 LESS total playoff games in 2010 compared to 2007 but 2 MORE than in 2009. Getting 5 games in the 1st round was a return to our historical "average" number of games for that round. This meant we got to work 6 more well-qualified people on the field in the 1st round than we'd been able to do with only 4 x 1st round games as in recent years. While the number of games in the playoffs in any one year isn't a good predictor for coming years, the trend is back in the right direction. Having gotten a semi-final game was the most notable event since it had been three years since we'd worked that deeply into the playoffs.
• In part, we can attribute this increase in games to our improved Part II test scores AND to the high-quality videos we had shot for us at season's end by specially-hired videographers. Certainly having more people attend the summer camps also helped since it enlarged the pool of names we were able to submit to GHSA for playoff consideration. This means it is extremely important that we continue to improve our Part II exam scores and have everyone who is otherwise playoff qualified also attend the mandatory-every-other-year summer training camps. It is also important to continue getting people promoted from Registered to Approved and Approved to Certified just as fast as we possibly can.

• (FUTURE) Follow this link to view a gallery of playoff crew pictures: 2010 Playoff Pictures

• We had a total membership of 81 officials as of the end of the season in ArbiterSports (2 less than for 2009). This is almost exactly average size for the 23 GHSA-sanctioned local officiating associations and is roughly level with our membership for 2008 and 2009.

• 1st Vice President, Joe Rice - newly elected
  Vice President, Marketing, Tony Cordaro - re-elected
  Vice President, Training, Steve Camp - newly elected

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