Part V of Why Youth Sports Umpires and Referees are Calling it Quits!

The downward spiral of the number of available youth umpires and referees has been happening for years, long before COVID-19 turned the world upside down. In 2019, newspaper articles nationwide talked about the impending shortage of youth sports officials. Like many things, in 2020, COVID made an already bad situation worse. Many umpires and sports officials “opted out” in 2020, and with much less aggravation and stress in their lives, found they didn’t miss it, and never returned to officiating. Since officials are leaving at a much faster rate than new ones are coming in, that’s why we have a shortage, and that’s why the average age of youth sports officials is so high. It’s a simple formula. If you need 150 employees to operate a business, and every year you lose 15 and only bring in 5, in a few years you’ve got a problem.

A popular explanation today when there’s a shortage of anything is to blame the problem on “supply chain issues”. Next time I’ll discuss the “supply chain issues” of officials in youth baseball, and how this not only creates a shortage, but also makes the average age of youth sports officials much higher than we’d like it to be.

---

Randy Corwin is a veteran Massachusetts youth baseball umpire and author of the book, OBNOXIOUS PARENTS AND RUTHLESS COACHES, which is now available at Amazon Books, Barnes and Noble’s online bookstore, and at An Unlikely Story Bookstore and Cafe in Plainville, MA. This post is part five of a series of articles based on the book.