skip navigation

Shortage of Officials in Illinois

By John Dunne, 10/06/21, 8:15PM CDT

Share

All games go down to the two (2) official system.

Due to the shortage of officials in Illinois and the surrounding areas, we are forced to reduce all games in the area down to the two (2) official system.

Effective Friday, October 8th, AHAI Assigners will move all College, Youth, High School and Girls games to a Two official system for all weekend scheduled games (Friday thru Sunday). It is anticipated that these two (2) official weekends schedule will be utilized thru October. (this effects mostly 15U and above Youth, HS Varsity and College levels)

Assigners will try and keep weekday games (Monday thru Thursday) staffed with 2, 3 or 4 official systems based on league needs. As of Tuesday, October 5 @ 3:00PM there are 268 games this weekend that currently only have 1 or NO Officials scheduled.

**** Please note that based on time, level and geographic areas, there may be games where 3 or 4 officials will be assigned to officiate. We will do our best to get these upper-level games covered where possible. Ex. we reduced a game Saturday down to 2 officials. The third official we pulled off refused to go to a rink closer to their home at the same time to work a similar level game.

Hockey is back in full force and sadly the officials are not. We were anticipating a large number of upper-level officials returning after the pandemic break. Based on the current numbers, there just is not enough officials to assign to open games or they just do not want to work. The stress that is on the officials who are currently working is starting to show. Where officials would work 2-3 games in a day, they are already up to 5 and 6 games a day.

The good news in all of this is that there are about 400 Level 1 and 2’s currently registered and complete. This does not fix the immediate problem, but it allows these new officials to get on the ice and gain some experience. Hopefully the abuse they take in their new careers in officiating will be nonexistent.

Level 3 or level 4 officials who did not register or work last year are steadily registering again and are being scheduled as soon as they are complete and registered with USAH. AHAI & IHOA are doing all they can to retain and re-enroll current officials whose registration expires November 30.

We need your patience and cooperation to make this work.

Below is an article from Mass Hockey. I think that this sums it up

https://mailchi.mp/mahockey/oct21officials?e=f5a904ca90

Questions: Contact John Dunne
jdunne@ahai2.org