The Looming Ref Crisis

During the 2023 NCAA National Championship, a dozen geese planted themselves on the racecourse before the final of the Division I second-varsity eights. Despite warnings from at least one coach, the referees did nothing to remove the geese or delay racing.

Less than a minute into the race, the Texas crew rowed directly into the flock, a completely avoidable obstacle that the team protested immediately after crossing the finish line—to no avail.

That same year, at the Head of the Charles, in addition to pride, money was on the line for the top three finishers in the Championship Singles events. Afterward, Emma Twigg, who earned $5,000 by finishing second, was overheard saying she had missed a buoy and was not penalized.

This, presumably, did not sit well with Kara Kohler, who finished fourth, just out of the money and a mere 3.4 seconds behind Twigg. She raised the issue with regatta officials, who directed her to the referees. But because an umpire hadn’t seen a violation and assessed a penalty during racing, the call could not be appealed.

Every coach has tales to tell of referees who do not take action in a crucial race or stepped in when it didn’t seem necessary. But the sport of rowing would not be possible without the presence of referees to ensure the safety and fairness of racing. And yet they’re often a source of frustration for rowers, coxswains, and coaches alike—when they’re noticed at all.

Every rower or coxswain can recall times when a referee harangued them unnecessarily for their steering or, worse yet, did nothing to address the sloppy steering of a competitor. While these stories are attention-grabbing and certainly a source of consternation, they represent only a small part of what referees do and the difficult realities they face.

Referees have the most thankless job in our sport. Most in the rowing world rarely look past their surface interactions with referees to understand all that goes into being an official, the challenges individual referees and the corps as a whole face, and the active efforts being undertaken to improve the practice.

Financial barriers to entry, low numbers, an aging demographic, lack of consistent compensation, and no standardized system for evaluation combine to limit the current and future effectiveness of referees. With each passing year, these problems are becoming only worse. Said Tom Rooks, USRowing’s Director of Sport Safety and Operations: “There’s an alarm on the dashboard.”

Today, the role of referee is being redefined.

“We’re in a challenging and ever-changing landscape,” said Gary Caldwell, commissioner of the Intercollegiate Rowing Association, “where some folks inside and outside the referee corps consider it avocational, and some people consider it vocational.”

The good news is that many in the referee corps, with renewed support from USRowing, are working behind the scenes to make things better, because they realize the stakes are high. Without an educated, energetic, accountable, and supported referee corps, the entire sport of rowing will suffer, becoming less safe, less fair, and ultimately less competitive.

To understand referees, it helps to know how they are made. First, referee candidates must complete the five-hour Referee Online Training Program. As the name suggests, the program is entirely virtual and is created by the Referee College, a consortium of senior referees from across the nation. After completing the program, along with passing a background check and SafeSport training, candidates move on to observations. They participate in ride-alongs with licensed referees at regional regattas, witnessing first-hand the unique responsibilities of the various referee positions and learning from more experienced officials.

Once they’ve accumulated enough observation hours, candidates move on to the licensing exam. This 50-question test is multiple-choice and open-book. After completing this final step, candidates become officially licensed assistant referees. After completing another round of practical testing, they can advance to becoming a full referee. By working at least four regatta days per year and completing annual continuing education, referees can keep their license active.

The process is straightforward and, notably, is executed without the involvement of USRowing until it’s time to confer the actual license.

The system, say some of the most established referees in the game, works. Kirsten Meisner has been a referee for nearly 25 years, serving as an umpire at numerous national and international regattas, including, this year, the Olympic Games. She’s also a member of the Referee College and knows the ins and outs of referee education.

“We have the background knowledge. It’s easier for us to just roll with it,” Meisner said, by way of explaining why the Referee College manages the training program. While turnover in USRowing staff can cause inconsistency, the referee corps remains stable, resulting in consistent educational standards for onboarding recruits.

“People who get the referee bug tend to stick around for a very long time,” Meisner said. “We have survived numerous different CEOs, numerous different boards, numerous different staff people. We have that perspective that they don’t necessarily have.”

Now for that “alarm on the dashboard.” It boils down to one word: compensation, a constant topic among referees and regatta directors. Though the position is volunteer, many referees can incur significant personal costs working a regatta, which discourages new candidates, especially younger ones. They’re required to travel long distances, stay overnight, which means often missing meals, time with family, and even paying workdays. For this, they may receive nothing more than a cup of coffee or, if they’re fortunate, complete travel reimbursement and a stipend. The time and economic barriers to entry are significant.

In 2023 when the Referee Committee, a group of referees who voluntarily advise USRowing, conducted a study of compensation at 97 regattas, they found that 97 percent provided some form of compensation but that nearly three-quarters provide no reimbursement for travel. The median daily compensation was $100, with a few offering up to $400 per day—and just as many offering zero.

The committee proposed a standard compensation rate ranging from $100 to $200 based on the number of hours worked. They proposed also that regattas should cover travel expenses, meals, and single-occupancy hotel rooms and advised that referees should have reasonable breaks throughout days that can last longer than 12 hours. USRowing already follows such practices for its national-championship regattas, but its example does not dictate how registered regattas handle compensation.

IRA Commissioner Caldwell stages five championship regattas every spring—Eastern Sprints, Women’s Sprints, National Invitational Rowing Championship, New England Rowing Championships, and the IRA National Championship. Just to accommodate moving referees to single-occupancy rooms, he said, increased hotel costs for the IRA National Champiobships from $11,000 to $23,000–a massive jump that resulted in higher regatta fees for participating teams.

Terry Friel Portell, the current chair of the Referee Committee, while acknowledging the financial impact of the proposed compensation model on regattas, believes it’s worth it.

“We have to address the fact that referees are volunteers and need fair compensation for our time, which unfortunately puts monetary stress on the local organizing committees and ultimately the athletes. We recognize that. But to attract younger people to refereeing, we can’t expect them to give up workdays, give up vacation days, go somewhere and do this for a weekend and not get paid, or at least not walk away even.”

Another issue plaguing the referee corps is evaluation. Currently, there is no standardized way to grade referees, and the opportunities for constructive feedback are limited. Chief referees are responsible for creating their own team of refs for a given event. The selection is made often through networking and word of mouth, since there’s no objective ranking of referees—a constant source of frustration in the sport.

“That’s something that I’d love to improve,” Meisner said. “There are definitely people who would benefit from some feedback and opportunities to do different things.”

Added Caldwell: “There are some wonderful folks who are in refereeing, and it’s simply not the right thing. God love ’em, they’ll continue to make the same mistakes over and over again.”

Many referees are older—average age, 60–and have been doing it for a long time. Some have no background in competitive rowing, and others became referees only because their children began rowing and reffing afforded a better view of the action than the parents’ tent on shore.

Without a formal evaluation mechanism, there’s no reliable way to identify referees who are making errors consistently or mismanaging events. Chief referees must rely on their personal experience of the referees they’ve worked with or recommendations from trusted colleagues and then do the best they can with the people available.

“If you know you need 20 people and you can find only 15 that you’d classify as ones you don’t have to worry about, you still need five more,” Meisner said. “You take what you can get if you really need it for safety purposes. You just become very particular about where you assign them.”

These two issues–compensation and evaluation–bear on the most pressing issue facing the referee corps: recruiting.

Rowing is undergoing tremendous growth, and there are too few referees to keep up. In 2023, there were 224 USRowing registered regattas, up from 168 in 2019. During the same period, the number of referees actually dropped. Today, there are about 450 active referees, and some regattas are struggling to find enough refs, let alone those who are accomplished and regarded highly.

“If you look at our numbers—where we’re going, and what we’re trying to accomplish—it doesn’t work,” Rooks said. “This cannot continue for very long.”

To address the problem, USRowing last summer created the Referee Programs Associate—a full-time staffer whose job is to deal with referees. Hugh McAdam, a former National Team rower, was tapped for the position and has been collaborating with the Referee Committee members, all of whom have 15 to 20 years of experience, to formulate a practical vision for the corps.

Rooks, who oversees McAdam, describes the role as 51 percent supporting the referees and 49 percent leading them. The refs have operated with a high degree of autonomy for a long time and would benefit, Rooks and other believe, from more involvement by the sport’s governing body.

Recruiting referees is a perennial challenge. Experienced young rowers and coxswains are discouraged from becoming referees often by the expense and the perception that reffing is for retirees.

“There aren’t enough college coaches pulling kids aside and saying, ‘If you want to stay with this but you don’t have time to row at a club or you’re not National Team material, try reffing. It’s the best seat in the house,’” Caldwell said. “I don’t think we do enough proselytizing.”

The goal of USRowing and the Referee Committee is to approve a new recruiting plan by October and implement it in January. Their resolve is such that it’s cemented in the 2025 budget.

Meanwhile, USRowing is recommending compensation for referees sufficient for them to break even, and perhaps pocket some extra cash for their time, skill, and effort. This would help attract more and higher-caliber referee candidates. But at this point, it’s just a suggestion; USRowing will not require its registered regattas to comply, so deciding whether and how much to pay refs still rests with organizers of individual regattas.

Also being discussed are formal means of evaluating referees, despite reluctance and resistance from some corners of the corps.

“By and large, referees are very professional, and the corps does a good job of representing USRowing,” McAdam said. “But there are always a couple of bad apples. I’d love to have a way to minimize those.”

“It’s going to require culture change to get to that because we haven’t had that,” said Referee Committee chair Friel Portell. “There are a lot of people who don’t care to have any feedback.”   

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