By Tim Sloan
“I quit!”
As an association leader, those are two words you usually never want to hear from a member, but exceptions may be warranted. Sometimes it’s great news, but responding by blowing noisemakers, popping party favors or tweeting glad tidings to the executive should never be done; it isn’t dignified.
But seriously, it may be fair to say that quitting is almost always a failure on someone’s part. OK, sometimes people leave because they’re moving or have had a life event dictating that they pull back: But those aren’t the people we’re covering here. I would propose that any time members resign because something wasn’t turning out the way they wanted or wasn’t what they thought it would be like, the officers or board members own at least a little bit of it. You can often trace the issue to some lack of understanding or undue expectation, which might have been avoided through better communication or more practicable policy on your part.
We can’t work through an exhaustive list of reasons for members leaving in the space available, but we can look at some examples illustrating common problems and what we might have done differently to head them off:
“I don’t get any good games.”
Yes, some members are born with a silver whistle in their mouth and have an incomprehensible sense of entitlement; whether they can do the job or not seems to have no bearing on why they don’t have their FIFA badge yet. If they are truly lousy and you don’t dare assign them beyond fourth-grade games, then you should always ask whether your training system is up to snuff: Could you have done anything more to help them improve? You can also look at whether your association’s attempts at inclusiveness have left some with the mistaken impression that time heals all schedules. Conversely, if your organization is seniority-driven enough that it thwarts legitimate growth of some members into higher levels of games, then you need to look at your ethics. But, if that is the case, you probably aren’t reading this article, either.
If people, in large numbers, are disappointed with their schedule, look for the root cause and fix it. The “enemy” may be you.
“Officiating stinks.”
Aside from the occasional mercenary, most people join an association because they think officiating might be fun, a challenge, or something they can do better than the people they’ve recently watched. When some of them later flake, they might just be in the “4F” category, refusing to accept how their genome works against them. Some new members have to turn sideways to get through the meeting room door. Others seem to rely on their pet lab to find a good seat: You might think about your organizational philosophy on weeding out ill-suited newbies before they spend a fortune on uniforms, clinics and antacids. Some leaders would be afraid that nudging those types to the curb is discriminatory, but it really isn’t: Sometimes you have to let people down before the coaches and angry fans do.
Many officials who quit, however, have developed a bad attitude about what they got into. If they’ve given up on the appraisal system, rulebook complexities, the off-field time required, etc., it could be you should have invested more effort in a support system for them. If it were just to get the rulebooks, get training and purchase equipment, many wouldn’t even need an officials association anymore; they could manage a lot of their development in isolation, online.
It follows that your organization should be giving new officials the support and reinforcement they can’t find elsewhere. They should be looking to you to get them over that hump in their development. The hump is the point where they’ve learned and worked enough to understand what they’ve gotten into but may not like what they see. If your reaction to their plight is to step over them on the sidewalk, you’ve not only wasted your resources on their development, but missed the point of your reason for existence. People quit in these cases because they decide they’re outmatched; take a long look at what your association is doing to mentor, buddy, prod and challenge developing officials: Something’s probably missing.
“I can’t handle the bad sportsmanship.”
Man, I hear that a lot. My drive to work every day is informative: Towns along the way post road signs boasting they’re the home of Peggy Power, the 3A state shot-put runner-up. I haven’t seen the sign plugging the kid who made 36 on the ACT, yet. Culture and society is changing, and more and more people believe athletics is the only thing where they or their kid have a fair chance to win and be notable. They’ve lost faith in God, government and fellow man. To my mind, the same disappointments that instilled this attitude convince them that evil forces must be at work when someone loses a stupid game. Poor sportsmanship is an expression of the participants’ belief the situation — which includes the officiating — is corrupt; they feel they must react or take matters into their own hands, in response.
When officials start running from that rabble, association leaders have to ask themselves whether we’ve invested enough time in the politics of officiating. Oh, we put a lot of effort into getting fair game fees and good assignments for our members, but do we do enough to make the officiating avocation safe and compelling? Is your state or the leagues you serve really doing enough to make sports inhospitable to the goofballs who care way too much who wins and ruin it for the rest? Oh, sure, people have the right of free expression, but so do we. Leaders have a huge responsibility to preserve the honor of the job our members do by sticking together and pushing back on the things that threaten us.
The bottom line is that people often leave your association for the same reasons they leave spouses, jobs and towns — they think there’s something better elsewhere. If you think they’ll regret their decision, good for you. If you think there’s a message in the exodus, you’re learning.
Prevent officials from quitting by providing the support they need. They’re much easier to keep than acquire.
Tim Sloan, Davenport, Iowa, is a high school football, basketball and volleyball official, and a former college football and soccer official.
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