Greetings,

I am writing to alert all officials that the Referee Commission is implementing a new on-line database to track our work experience (http://referee.usrowing.org). This new Referee Data System was created and written by Kirsten and Howard Meisner on behalf of the Commission. I’ll describe how to access this system and use some of its features, but first, I want to explain why it is important for the Commission to collect information about your work as an official.

Quite simply, what distinguishes a USRowing licensed official from all other volunteers is that licensed officials are all trained against a common standard based upon the USRowing Rules of Rowing. Our training emphasizes uniform and consistent procedures for implementing and interpreting the Rules. The license communicates that its holder has been evaluated and tested against a Rules-based standard of competency. We believe that this is in the best interest of competitors at all levels of experience and competitive performance. Learning and maintaining the skills that are needed to achieve this standard of competency requires both classroom training (clinics) and practical on-the-water experience. This is why we require all officials to attend annual clinics and to work a minimum number of events each year. It is also for this purpose that we conduct an annual “data call” in which we collect a record of regattas worked and clinics attended in the prior year. This information allows the Referee Commission to certify to USRowing, as well as to the sponsoring and sanctioning organizations for regattas, that its licensed officials meet these minimum requirements.

The evolving nature of our relationship with USRowing and with other sanctioning organizations has created another need for tracking and documenting our work as officials. Over the past four years, the Referee Commission has maintained a dialog with the USRowing Board of Directors and with some of the major sanctioning organizations for scholastic and collegiate rowing regarding our service as competition officials. Two different, but ultimately complementary, concerns have driven this dialog. On the one hand, officials have increasingly indicated that they cannot continue to completely self subsidize their training and regatta expenses. On the other hand, the demand for competently trained and experienced officials continues to grow. In the short run, this has created a sense of impending crisis as more and larger regattas are added to the calendar each year, and the current officials are asked to give up more time while traveling further from home in order to staff these events. With the growing stature of the sport, especially at the scholastic and collegiate levels, comes additional pressures for providing officials who “know what they are doing” and who are capable of conducting events without mistakes or disruptions, which equates to adding on even more work experience and additional time to attend clinics or workshops.

To address this situation, the Referee Commission has begun to ask for more financial support from USRowing, as well as from some of the major sanctioning organizations who want to utilize the service of USRowing licensed officials. We hope to develop new opportunities for standardized training through a more extensive network of clinics and workshops, and perhaps through distance-learning technologies. Ideally, the costs will be subsidized by the recipients of our services, either through budget allotments from USRowing (whose income is derived from organization and individual membership dues) and/or through direct grants from the sanctioning organizations and regattas themselves. We also have been lobbying for increased reimbursement for travel, housing, and meals for all officials, so that their own out-of-pocket expenses can be reduced. This will come predominantly from the individual regattas, either through entry fees paid by the competitors or through sponsorship donations.

In order to structure a rational business plan for the future support of USRowing officials, as well as for making our case when we approach our own Board of Directors and other organizations to ask for support, we need the hard data that backs up our anecdotal claims of ever increasing demands for officials to staff events and the increasing dollar costs to individual officials. This has provided another impetus to develop this new Referee Data System. If properly implemented, we will be able to track, in real time, where and how much our officials are working and can better ascertain the associated expenses. We will be able to generate data-driven reports and proposals for where the greatest needs are for new recruitment and training, and will hopefully be able to more efficiently match whatever resources we are able to obtain to where they are most needed.

In designing the Referee Data System, the Meisners took into consideration the practical needs of individual officials. As a web accessible database, you will now have the capability to log on and record your regatta as soon as each is completed. You can optionally record your assignments (starter, referee, etc.), as well, to keep track of what positions you have worked throughout the year. And in the “Regatta Comments” field, you can add miscellaneous notes such as special circumstances, who you worked with, your expenses, etc. These comments will be accessible only by you. You can then subsequently use the system to generate reports of your activity in terms of regattas worked, as well as to review any of the optional information that you have entered.

In addition to your personal information and records, you can enter preferences for which states you want to work in. Chief referees will then be able to access this information when they are recruiting officials for their events. Currently, you can also indicate a preference to work at one of the USRowing national championship regattas, as well as log your interest in attending the annual Julian Wolf National Referee Training School. As we continue to utilize this system, it has been designed to allow additional features to be added on in future versions.

The Referee Data System is accessible on the web at http://referee.usrowing.org. To log in, you will need your USRowing membership number, and your referee license number. These are both listed on your license card. The login page also lists the regional representatives to the Referee Commission with a hyperlink to their e-mail address. If you have difficulty logging in (or cannot locate your membership or license numbers) contact your representative for assistance. Please, give it a try! The first time in, go to “Update my Profile” and check that we have all your current contact information. Another benefit of this new system is that our database will be linked to the USRowing membership database, so that if you change any of your contact information, this will be communicated to USRowing membership as well. If you are concerned about the security of the information that is entered into this database, there is also a link to the USRowing Data Privacy Policy on the login page.

The final purpose of this letter is to announce that the annual data call is now underway and must be completed by February 15. Please use the Referee Data System to log your regatta work and clinic attendance from the 2005 calendar year. You can enter all the information in just one session, or else complete this over multiple sessions. Each time you log out, everything will be saved, so you can always come back and add to it. Remember, completion of the annual data call is a license requirement.

From this point on, you can enter clinic attendance and regatta work “as you go” and will no longer have to enter all this information at once at the end of each year, so look around and get familiar with this new tool, and develop the habit to log back in after each clinic and regatta.

I hope you agree that our new Referee Data System is a useful tool, and I hope you find that it is easy and convenient to use. For more detailed instructions, there is a User Manual that you can link to at any time. If you encounter any problems, please contact the help desk at refdb@usrowing.org. Send any comments on its utility and/or suggestions for improvements or added features to your regional representative.

Wishing you well,

Robert Appleyard