SPORTS OPINION

SPORTS UMPIRE SHORTAGE IMPACTS HIGH SCHOOL GAMES

Shortage is complely justified because of outrageous fans and coaches

BY COLDEN KADLIC

Around the nation, a shortage of umpires and officials has been affecting the play of not only youth sports but also high school varsity sports. In particular, high school baseball has been hit the hardest by this shortage. Across the county, varsity baseball teams are being forced to play several games with coaches officiating the game. In Central Ohio, for example, a D1 baseball team Olentangy High School was forced into this exact situation.

What is the reasoning for this shortage?

From first-hand experience as a youth sports umpire, I know that parents can be ruthless and very unkind to their officials who choose to umpire these games.

After one game in particular where my fellow umpire and I were officiating, my partner made a bad call to end the game. So what? Everyone messes up and everyone should accept this and move on, right? Wrong.

My partner and I were then cussed out and heckled by a majority of the fans and coaches present at the game. They even followed us to our cars and continued to yell at us. Also, let me remind you this was a 12-yearold game. Parents were outraged over a bunch of 12-year-olds.

From my understanding, this shortage is completely justified because I

Umpire Max Mills poses before a game. Photo by Colden Kadlic understand why umpires and officials do not want to put up with these outrageous fans and coaches. On top of this, the pay that these officials are receiving for having to deal with these situations is not at all worth it. Officials are being paid a very small amount to deal with constant heckling, which is why many will not return to the field.

To this problem, I provide the following solution: pay them more. If you want people to put up with the annoying fans and malicious coaches, we have to pay them more. The pay right now is around $45 a game, which sounds like good money, but it is not enough to but up with these problems.

These fans and coaches are ruining the experience for the kids and that must stop. At the end of the day, it should all be for the kids but right now they are not getting to experience the game of baseball to the fullest extent.

The umpire shortage must be fixed. Not only do we need to pay them more, we need to treat them better, too.

Athlete Opinion: What is your take on the umpire shortage?

“I think that people are sitting at home doing nothing in general so the umpire shortage comes along with that.”

-Amelia Sarap

“We have to postpone because we have a limited amount of umpires.”

-Drew Cottrell

“It kills us playing wise because we can only get one umpire per game. They can't be every where at once, so they can't get calls correct."

-Connor Hale

“Part of the reason is the lack of respect. And part of that is that there aren't enough umpires so they can't make good calls. So it is a cycle.”

-Joseph Day