From: Manny Ortiz, Jr., NISOA Executive Director
NISOA Executive Director – Manuel Ortiz, Jr. (TX)
The NAIA Council of Presidents and the Conference Commissioners passed an initiative to work with Arbiter Sports to register and communicate with officials. This was for all sports with soccer officials registration effective for the 2015-16 school year. The intent is for the NAIA to communicate with officials across the conferences and provide specific training for officials.
The NAIA is imposing the following fees: $50.00 if the person already is registered with the NCAA ($65.00). If the official is only registering with the NAIA, the fee is $90.00 (which is $20-$35 less than other sport registrations according to the NAIA).
The NAIA recognizes the “fantastic work” NISOA does with training of officials and has made two exemptions for this season:
- An official works two or less NAIA regular season varsity matches.
- An official is a current NISOA National Referee.
These individuals do not have to pay the registration fee unless they are assigned post-season games.
The above is the decision of the NAIA, not NISOA. Officials must decide if it is to their benefit to register with the NAIA. Registration does not guarantee any post season assignments. It only makes the official eligible. Assignors must make the decisions on who will be used for the regular season, whether registered with the NAIA or not. To make it clear, registration is a personal decision by each official. Every NISOA member will still receive a rule book next year, training materials, and updates from NISOA.
NISOA will continue to work with the NAIA to resolve the matter of imposing fees. The membership will be kept informed of developments as they occur.
I noticed in the explanation of the separate NAIA registration fee that it wasn’t just being used to register officials, some of the fees are also being collected as a slush fund to finance among other things — an officials coordinator (whatever that is – sounds somewhat redundant to the assigning function) and to increase the pay for playoff officials. While these items may be laudable or desirable, they are a cost of administering the sport — it is wholly inappropriate to finance them via an effective “tax” on officials who may or may not get a chance to work one of NAIA’s games. I hope that the NISOA leadership will work with NAIA (and NCAA if they are doing the same thing with their reg. fees) to minimize or eliminate costs that are passed along to the entire (or broad sections of the) membership if they are not directly benefiting the entire membership. Ref who get 1, 5 or 10 games a year shouldn’t be underwriting things that ultimately only benefit refs working 30, 40 or more college games per year.