How do you get games?

[Welpe]

I am curious to see how other chapters assign varsity games. I am conducting an informal poll, how do you get varsity games in your chapter (coaches draft, lottery, assigned, etc)?  Does your chapter use crews and if so, how are they formed? If you're comfortable, please also share your chapter.

I'll start:

Houston chapter.

We use crews for 11 man varsity and some six man varsity. Crews are formed with few restrictions, I believe only on who can be a crew chief though I'd need to check again.

For 11 man varsity, coaches draft crews in a draft once a year starting with 5A and going down 1A followed by TAPPS / Private schools. There are no restrictions on how many games a crew can get. Games for schools that do not attend the draft are assigned to crews by the board.

Six man varsity games are all assigned by a separate assigner from our executive secretary. He works on a request basis though he will also assign you games when you're free. He will either assign a six man crew to a game or assign individuals to form ad hoc crews for that game.

[mishatx]

The magic game fairy gives them to me.

[JasonTX]

We do not use crews for varsity.  All games are assigned.  No coaches picks.  Playoffs we allow coaches to pick by name. 

Subvarsity we use crews.  Each year we change things up on how the crews are built.  One year we allowed the selected crew chiefs to recruit 1 veteran and 1 newer official prerably less than 5 years experience and then we picked a rookie and place them on that crew.  Last year we used a draft method.  First pick was for the veteran and second pick was for a newer official.  Then we picked the rookie to put on each crew.

[Welpe]

Thanks Jason, that is an interesting system. I like the crew idea for subvarsity.

Do varsity officials work one position all year or does it vary per game?

[rickref]

We have crews but chapter is not 100 percent crews. Crews hit criteria to be 5a 4a eligible. Some crews that do not have this criteria are allowed as well.

5a 4a 3a coachs pick crews for games. The rest of all games are assigned by the secretary.

We also rules for number of times to see ateam in a year etc. Its not perfect but it for the most part works really well.

 

[JasonTX]

Thanks Jason, that is an interesting system. I like the crew idea for subvarsity.

Do varsity officials work one position all year or does it vary per game?

It all depends on their preference.  Each official will list the order of preference for each position.  We attempt to fill all the positions based on each officials #1 preference.  I know we have a couple of weeks where we are swamped with games so some officials who have Referee as their #5 preferred position will be working as Referee. 

Our guys like the crew system for subvarsity and the non-crew system for varsity.  They get the "bonding" of a crew that most crews enjoy and then at the same time they get to work with a number of other officials on varsity games.  We get the best of both worlds and it works good for us.