By: Trey Dallas
As University of Oklahoma intramural participant numbers hit high water marks across the board, a key figure in the intramural sports equation is missing the mark: officials needed for each competition.
Currently, there are 44 active employees for intramurals within OU Fit+Rec. Of those 44, only 23 are on staff as officials. Jonathan Dewhirst, Coordinator for intramural sports, believes that number is lower than where it needs to be.
“Right now, we are on the low end and we are trying to find more. But, you’re constantly trying to find a happy medium. Obviously you want to have enough officials to be able to cover all of the games, but we also don’t want to be too overstaffed to the point where our officials can’t develop and hone in their officiating skills,” Dewhirst said.
With that happy medium Dewhirst is seeking to find, the intramural program has been severely struggling at times with the former point. Many official shifts on a nightly basis are left open, leading to supervisors having to step in and fill those open spots.
Matt Ruiz, a current supervisor for the intramural program, believes these shortages place a major strain on the staff and leave the supervisors hung out to dry.
“Supervisors already have enough responsibilities throughout a shift as it is. Adding the element of having to step in and officiate while also having to worry about getting teams checked in properly and inputting game scores leads to supervisors not being able to do their job as well as they could,” Ruiz said.
One of the biggest reasons why staff numbers have been a major point of concern this year has been due to the overlap of sports that require officials. Previously, Fit+Rec set up intramurals in a way where one sport was playing at a time. This year however, sports have overlapped with each other, which creates a higher demand for officials night in and night out.
The reason for the schedule change? The installation of the new light system out at the Fit+Rec intramural fields.
“They (the university) want to see us using our lights. If we only use the lights once in the fall for flag football and then once in the spring for soccer then the need for lights doesn’t seem as strong. But if you play both football and soccer in each semester, then that’s 10 weeks each semester that our lights are getting used,” Dewhirst said.
In the fall 2023 semester, OU intramurals contested flag football, softball, basketball and soccer. Flag football was the first sport, starting the fourth week of the semester. In the time span of week four up until dead week before finals, there were eight weeks of overlap between two of the sports, and there were two weeks when three of the sports overlapped with each other.
Starting a new sport requires training to learn the rules and regulations. But if officials are occupied with working the first sport, then training for the upcoming season will be sparsely populated leaving the official pool even more limited. Intramural supervisor Lily Humphries believes this is a major deterrent for the program.
“When our officials are unable to attend training for the upcoming sport, they are unable to officiate games for that sport until they make up their training hours. This limits official scheduling capabilities and leads to many shifts being left open and unfilled,” Humphries said.
Both Ruiz and Humphries believe the program would benefit from word-to-mouth advertising to get students’ attention about being an official. Both believe the current advertising system is insufficient.
“We need to go to where students are and attempt to pull them in. Go to the Union. Go to the South Oval. Sitting in the lobby at Sarkeys and sending out an occasional email is not getting the word out efficiently enough,” Ruiz said.
“This job needs to be advertised more around campus. We also need to emphasize that no prior experience is necessary for officiating any of the sports,” Humphries said.
Comments by Trey Dallas