North Dakota Preps

Since this was brought up and discussed in the Region tournament thread and it was unclear how it happened, I decided to do some investigation on the NDHSAA site and this is what I found:

"Three whistle crews will be assigned to all region and state tournament games. After selection
by coaches’ ballot, the assignment of officials for regional games shall be made by the
tournament manager. Said assignments are to be made by the manager one week prior to the
tournament and officials are to be notified of their specific assignments immediately thereafter.
Management is requested to provide two passes for each working game official."

What I take this to mean is that the state assigns the region officials based on the coaches voting and then the tournament manager is in charge of saying who gets what games in the tournament.

I couldn't find anything in the Basketball regulations that talked about Districts (Maybe that's because Region 7 has no districts, thus the state allows the districts choose for themselves.)

This may be a change from what happened in past years, but this is what happened this year for sure.

When I was coaching the district coaches nominated officials a week prior to the district seeding meeting. At the meeting they were then voted on by all the coaches. It was then the district chairs job to contract the officials according to rank. Some would already have contracts for other districts, etc. my last year we offered two year contracts because it was so difficult to book the officials at the top because the other districts would also sign them two years out.

Generally district coaches select district officials. Process varies from district to district.

The NDHSAA sends an electronic ballot to coaches to vote for region refs. Seems every year coaches get to regionals and wonder who in the heck voted for these guys. Seems to be a couple regional refs every year who no coach will admit to voting for. You see a few region refs who don't seem to ever work a district tourney.

The legitimacy of the region selection process appears to be frequently questioned.

You have to understand that the NDHSAA is the one that counts the ballots. I believe they also count their own vote in the mix too. Then, as they are assigning, referees do get shuffled a bit between regions because during the regular season they work multiple regions.

Region A may have had 10 votes for referee X, 12 votes for Y, and 11 votes for Z. Region B may have 13 votes for ref W, 14 votes for Z, 9 votes for V, and 8 votes for U. In this case Z is wanted in 2 regions. Maybe Z ends up in Region B, leaving a hole in Region A. So maybe U, who got a high number of votes in Region B, gets shifted to Region A, where few if any voted for him/her.

This would help to explain the "who voted for this guy" comment from coaches.

Coaches votes are not given as much weight as you guys seem to think.

All of the ND class B girls basketball coaches are emailed a link to a voting survey where they vote for regional officials for that season. This is from the NDHSAA. Not every coach gets this info as many times the schools athletic director/administrator get the email instead. Regardless, each school gets an email with chance to vote.

The problem arises when the same officials are chosen for the boys regional tournament & the girls regional tournament. I believe officials are allowed to work only ONE regional tournament per year. And that is how we see the poorer officials getting the girls class b regional tournaments.

I believe there is also something like a regional director of officials who has a say in which officials get the regional tournaments. He keeps track of who does the districts & regionals to be sure of the one regional rule. If there happens to be a shortage of officials for the girls regions, this guy gets a vote. I think this is ultimately how some poor officials end up doing a regional (a poorer official often gets a chance to do a regional--sort of like the buddy buddy system).

The coaches NEVER see the final voting list. I have never heard of a coach who ever got to see the regional officials list. The coaches SHOULD see the list. That way the process is a little more transparent.