Recruitment and Retention of Sports Officials

Abstract

Sabaini (2001) states that “virtually everyone with an interest in improving the numbers and quality of officials must become involved in recruitment and retention” (12). Once standards are set for recruiting and retaining hardworking, positive, and honest officials, management must find ways to evaluate and reward those officials to uphold the accountability of each individual performance at any sporting event. Managers need to reevaluate who, what, when, and where they are recruiting. They must be able to create clear, measurable, and significant goals for current officials such as making expectations clear, holding mandatory study sessions, demanding national and/or regional clinic attendance, creating standards for physical conditioning, and developing rules preparation and game performance expectations (Sabaini, 2003). These changes can only be accomplished by staying consistent with the idea that a change needs to be made.