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	Funktionäre \| Nachwuchs-Rekrutierung
	Quelle: Referee 12/2001 / Autor: Dave Simon
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	Tired of the Spouse and Kids? Become a Referee! • Umpires Needed! How Much Abuse Can You Take? • Officiating: It's More Fun Than Stamp Collecting! How would you feel if you were thinking of getting into officiating and those were the recruitment slogans thrown at you? Probably wouldn’t make you want to sign up, would it? Those slogans, if they were real, certainly wouldn’t be considered very well thought out. They’re counterproductive, slapdash and vaguely menacing. The recruitment efforts of your own local association, if they exist, aren’t likely that ridiculous, but are they any better considered? How much time, research and effort have you put into your recruiting campaign? Commander Steven C. Lowry of the Navy Recruiting Command spoke at the NASO annual conference in Norfolk, Va., June 16-20. He outlined the process by which the U.S. Navy recruits new sailors, and how sports officiating organizations can apply those same principles. The Target Market According to Lowry, before you can begin any recruiting initiative you must first identify that there’s a problem. “You’ve already reached phase one,” Lowry told the audience in Norfolk, pointing out that the conference theme of recruitment and retention was an acknowledgement of the problem. “You’ve recognized that you are or shortly will be experiencing difficulties in getting and keeping experienced sports officials.” Once that acceptance of the problem exists, the second step is to research the problem, said Lowry. That means examining what does and doesn’t work in recruiting. “You not only have to identify your target market and their preferences,” he said, “you have to develop a definitive plan for reaching that market.” In the Navy’s case, the target market is young men and women, “Generation Y.” For officials organizations, the target market doesn’t necessarily have to be younger people, but because of the ever-aging pool of current officials, it’s not a bad idea. Once you identify a particular market of potential recruits, Lowry said, “You need to find out their long-range goals and defining characteristics. Do you know what media they prefer? How they seek out information? That’s critical.” Lowry said the Navy recruits through the Internet as one medium that techno savvy younger people gravitate toward. Additionally, the television commercials the Navy uses emphasize technological advancement and, as Lowry put it, “cool toys.” Recent surveys conducted by both NASO and the NFHS give some clues as to why people don’t get into officiating and why people leave officiating. Two major factors that came up time and again were sportsmanship issues — meaning people were turned off by the proliferation of poor sportsmanship — and career or job demands — meaning that full-time jobs are demanding too much time. Dave Gannaway, assistant executive director of the Illinois High School Association (IHSA), looked at the findings of the NFHS and NASO surveys and recognized he could not best address the issue of losing officials because of job or career demands. He instead focused on the sportsmanship issue. The sportsmanship issue, he said, “is a school problem. We put together flyers to the schools concerning their responsibilities in hosting an official and mailed it last year. It addresses the school’s responsibilities prior to game, during the contest and after the contest, and is designed to improve the atmosphere for officials.” Lowry added that research is a continual process, but once you’ve identified a target market and start to understand the factors that motivate them, you can begin to move into the next phase of recruitment — packaging and selling the product of officiating. Packaging the Product “It sounds sort of crass,” said Lowry. “But if you want to sell somebody something, you need to persuade them that’s what they need.” To sell the concept of sports officiating, Julie Ilacqua, managing director of federation services for the USSF, said, “You can sell being involved in a sport you love at a higher level as an official than perhaps you could have attained as a player. Most people look at the abuse officials take and say, ‘Why would I want to do that?’ Officiating is a mental and physical challenge — some people will respond to that.” Another approach to sell the avocation to younger officials, according to Ilacqua, is the financial side. “Our young officials see other young officials on their games and know they are getting paid to officiate. That is probably the biggest motivating factor for a young official,” she said. And the people needed to sell those wares, the recruiters themselves, where do they come from? “Our product is Naval service,” said Lowry, “Sailors who have lived the Navy life make more credible salesmen.” “The best tool we have,” said Bruce Hulion, commissioner of football officials for the South Carolina High School League, “is word of mouth — an official recruiting a prospect. Nothing sells better than your own personal experience. Over the years, that has been the major focus of our recruiting efforts. However, using today’s technology, we have received a number of inquiries from people who have found our website and ask about becoming an official. I’m certain that we’ll use the Internet even more in our recruiting efforts in the future.” But the efforts of recruiters are not easy, warned Lowry. “For every young person who signs a contract to come into the Navy, a recruiter has to talk to between 80 and 100 prospects. Not a great ratio. There’s a lot of rejection and you have to be prepared to deal with that.” When pulling potential recruiters from the ranks, Lowry advised asking a few questions first: “Who will make the most effective salespeople? What training do they need? Who is going to provide the training? And the bottom line: Who is going to fund that training? Your personal contacts are not going to be enough to keep the system going. We tried that and it didn’t work. You must go out, meet people, talk to them about officiating. We found we needed training to coordinate that effort. Perhaps your groups will, too.” Dan Rudloff, president of the Eastern Pennsylvania Intercollegiate Soccer Officials Association, said he has to beat the bushes to find officials. “We look at local clubs, high schools, guys who play sports in college to find someone available. We’ve placed flyers around colleges, but it’s time-consuming. We’ve placed ads in college newspapers. Everyone is busy with families and officiating, and recruiting takes away from that. Officiating is already a sacrifice to the family.” But to truly reach out to find officials, you cannot limit your search to athletics, says Lowry. “Our recruiters are encouraged to go where the prospects go — malls, shopping centers, sports events, all those places. You have to ask yourself, ‘Where does my target market hang out?’ Do people who might be interested in sports officiating spend all their free time at sporting events? Probably not. I don’t sit by the waterfront on all of my free time.” In that vein, Gannaway said the IHSA has partnered with other groups to beef up recruiting. The IHSA provides support to other groups — officials associations, for example, he said. “We go to colleges and look for a high school association in the area to find a liaison to work with someone inside the college,” he added. Working together, they place advertisements and set up a mini-clinic to try and attract officials. Programs are currently in place at Eastern Illinois, Southern Illinois, Illinois State and Triton College, and Gannaway said the results have been very good. Obstacles and Incentives No successful recruiting effort is going to fall into place without encountering some bumps along the way. For the Navy as well as for officiating, said Lowry, those obstacles include availability of prospects, the likelihood that an individual will be interested in recruiting and a decline in the number of veterans. “With the loss of veterans, we lose the positive stories, the experiences that influence the young people to serve,” Lowry said, a lesson that applies directly to officiating and the influence veterans can wield in bringing new officials into the fold. “Our retirees have not been instrumental in our recruiting efforts,” said Hulion. “That’s an area we hope to change soon. Some of our retirees have suggested that they be allowed to return and help train some of the younger guys.” Ilacqua agrees with the use of veterans to help, especially with regard to retention. She said mentors are “the way to go to keep referees in the program. We know that all of our national referees have been mentored through their officiating careers. To formalize this program when you have more than 110,000 referees is difficult. We do recommend that it be done at the state level. We are now trying to identify promising referees at a younger age so we can see that they have a mentor.” Lowry posed a number of questions worth considering to retain experienced personnel: “Are the veterans of your organization present? Are they working? Are they influencing the people who you want to be the next generation of sports officials? What would the loss of those veterans do to you? How would they influence you?” A potential recruit’s propensity for officiating is another key factor that could be an obstacle. Going back to the NFHS and NASO surveys, it’s probably going to be tougher to recruit people who have jobs that demand a lot of their time or people who are leery because of poor sportsmanship. “We need to find people with the expertise, time and a willingness to travel,” Rudloff cited as another example of obstacles. “I’ve seen guys and gals who would be good officials, but wouldn’t put up with criticism from outside the games.” For example, Rudloff said his association is teaching peewee officials to ignore adults. “Our biggest problem is dealing with parents. ‘You have a yellow card and a red card in your pocket to use,’ we tell the beginning officials. You have the cards in your pocket for a reason. We have so many games that an official doesn’t have to worry about going back to a school if there’s been a problem,” he added, echoing the decline in sportsmanship dilemma. “The obstacles we face are the amount of time we require a recruit to spend in classroom meetings, scrimmages and working sub-varsity contests,” said Hulion. “We stick with a very structured format, because that is the best method we’ve found for training officials. Some people just don’t have the time to spend on an avocation such as officiating.” “Also,” Hulion continued, “getting the ‘word out’ that we need officials has been an area we have found difficult. I don’t know of many cases where a particular district has used TV, radio or print media on a regular basis to recruit officials. In the ones that have used print media and radio, there was little if any response. Since we depend on each district to recruit, we are not looking for any one or several individuals to head up our recruiting efforts. Our local directors usually know who is going to retire and they recruit to fill the slots.” Lowry said recognizing those obstacles is extremely important. “You know what you’re working against, now you need to turn it around,” he said. “OK, so that’s an obstacle; how can I balance it out with an incentive to a recruit? It’s not just money. What other incentives are there in officiating?” It All Works Together Recruitment is just one part of a larger whole, says Lowry. “The Navy looks at recruiting as only one leg of the tripod of its personnel program. The other two are attrition and retention. Think about it; it makes sense: By reducing attrition and increasing retention, you lower the number of prospects you need.” The Lowry session in Norfolk “sunk in,” Gannaway said. “Now we need to think in more detail on how to accomplish effective recruiting. Not just whether to do it, but is it worthwhile. We’ll track our programs and see if the effort is worth it or whether we’ll put money into something more worthwhile.” Lowry concluded with a simple message, “All of these things we deal with to keep the Navy together — recruiting, attrition, retention — they are the responsibility of everyone in the organization, not just the recruiters. The recruiters find the prospects, our instructors in boot camp and our training schools work hard to make sure every recruit is successful — that lowers attrition. And our veteran sailors and officers mentor their shipmates to make sure that the best well-trained sailors stay in the Navy. “The bottom line for us is the bottom line for you in sports officiating: Bring in the most qualified candidates and then work hard to keep them.” (David Simon is a freelance writer from Columbus, Neb. He has officiated basketball since 1984 and currently works predominately small college and high school contests.) Commander Steven C. Lowry, United States Navy Commander Lowry currently serves as Public Affairs Officer, Navy Recruiting Command, a position he has held since July 1999. A native of Westwood, Mass., Commander Lowry earned a B.A. in Music Education from the University of Hartford (Conn.). He holds an M.A. in Human Resource Development from Webster University, St. Louis, and received his commission at Officer Candidate School, Newport, R.I., in July 1982. Commander Lowry’s officer assignments include Deputy Public Affairs Officer, Commander in Chief U.S. Atlantic Fleet; Public Affairs Officer, USS AMERICA (CV 66); Deputy Public Affairs Officer, Navy Office of Information New England; Public Affairs Officer, Commander, Submarine Squadron 14, Holy Loch, Scotland; Aide to the Commander, Naval Base Charleston, S.C., and division officer aboard USS EL PASO (LKA 114), Norfolk, Va. Commander Lowry’s personal decorations include the Meritorious Service Medal with two gold stars in lieu of third award, Navy Commendation Medal with three gold stars in lieu of fourth award, the Navy and Marine Corps Achievement Medal, and several unit awards.