Rochester, MN. – When facilitating tournaments, it’s important to have experienced and qualified officials working the games. To accomplish this, we have great assignors in the area who have always done a great job behind the scenes filling up all the game slots.
Unfortunately, finding enough refs to fill tournament slots has increasingly become a challenge in the last year. f the trend continues, the tournament opportunities currently available to our youth may be jeopardized.
In the Rochester area, the shortage of local refs requires the use of more out-of-town officials than ever before. For several of our summer tournaments, we had to use crews out of the Minneapolis area to fill out the game schedules
It seems to be a significant issue across all sports.
This can be attributed to several reasons. Mostly, many officials are finding it not worth the hassle as the pressure from coaches and parents has become increasingly intense. When planning for future events, this seems to be a major issue not too many people are talking about, probably because everyone expects that officials showing up to the game is just a given.
As we move forward, there are steps being taken to help train, educate and build the base of officials at all levels and all sports. One up-and-coming non-profit organization in Rochester is Official Love. The organization is founded by Sports Commission board member Kristopher Loving and the mission is to serve communities, families, and individuals through the support, recruitment, retention, and development of sports officials.
I know they have some great plans and ideas in place on how they can begin to grow officiating from the ground up. When looking at current officiating challenges, this organization may be just what is needed in our community.
If you are a parent with kids who will be competing in the future, this is definitely something to keep an eye on moving forward. I know at the Sports Commission it has become a concern when we move forward and work with local groups on running events and look to create opportunities to bring new events to Rochester.
It’s comforting knowing there are people in the area who share the concern about the lack of officials, and groups such as Official Love looking to make a difference in this area. More information on this organization can be found at www.official-love.org.

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