Treatment of game officials, NIL, Title IX are hot national high school sports topics

It's going to be a hot summer, but the topics on the National Federation of High School Associations' agenda after this past school year are even hotter.

• The poor treatment of game officials scaring off people from working games.

• Name, Image and Likeness from the NCAA falling into the high schools with nine states allowing athletes to cash in on endorsement opportunities.

• Celebrating the 50th anniversary of Title IX and how to get more females involved in coaching.

Those were the topics addressed by NFHS chief executive officer Karissa Niehoff in an hour-long national Zoom webinar on Tuesday with the media.

Violence towards officials

Dana Pappas, the director of officiating for the NFHS, took part in the officials discussion, regarding sportsmanship issues that have made it difficult retaining and recruiting officials.

"We have an officials shortage that we've seen across the board," Niehoff said. "We watched this coming. It's been a bit of a storm on the horizon. But I think COVID exacerbated the pace that we needed to execute to pay attention to this.

"We've been working for four years on officials' recruitment, campaign."

In April, Pappas conducted an officials consortium in Indianapolis. There were 61 attendees with representatives from the pro, collegiate, high school and youth levels.

"We all knew there was a shortage," Pappas said. "But what was happening, every entity was coming up with their own strategy."

They identified the barriers and problems with officials' recruitment and retention.

There was a loss of 34,000 officials among the 37 states that tracked such data from 2018-20. The national associates estimated more the 50,000 officials were lost. Arizona was among the many states that saw a decrease in officials over that time.

Read more: How the pandemic is affecting Arizona high school sports officials

But, from 2020-22, there were signs of an increase of people registering to be officials among most states, including Arizona. Much of that had to do with officials wanting to return from the pandemic crisis.

Pappas said there was a nationwide increase of approximately 12,000 officials from last year to this year.

However, bad behavior from parents, athletes and coaches have brought major concerns to states, including Arizona.

Brian Gessner, head of officials for the Arizona Interscholastic Association, said that in this past school year, there was a 77% increase in coach ejections and 26% increase in player ejections across the board among all of the sports.

"Weekly incidents of outrageous behavior from coaches, players, and fans," Gessner said in a text to The Arizona Republic. "Gaining momentum locally, state and nationally to improvement in sportsmanship."

Niehoff said there have been more stories on officials being assaulted.

"There are a number of states right now have legislation on the table or has been passed that specifically speaks to protecting officials from assault," Niehoff said. "To know that our state governments have had to do that, it's extremely disheartening.

"We see things on social media. We hear stories. We've seen awful examples of how officials are treated. And these are experienced veterans or even brand new, late teens, early 20s starting out in the career. And they're being treated miserably.

"The term sportsmanship has been used for a long time. While it's still important, it might be a little watered down, a little tired at this point."

There will be another consortium held in the fall involving law enforcement.  There needs to be collected commitment, clear expectations and clear accountability and consequences, Niehoff said.

"I think by doing that, it will help keep that behavior from continuing to be normalized," she said.

NFHS against athletes benefiting from NIL

The NFHS has never issued a position statement on financial benefits from NIL (name, image and likeness), because it is a federation by design and that requires states to have one uniform policy regarding this, Niehoff said. But the NFHS realizes that high school-age students can be "tremendous entrepreneurs with their name, image and likeness in a number of capacities," she said.

"We realized the ability in a handful of cases to be recognized for their athletic prowess," Niehoff said. "That can be a nice opportunity for a young person. But we're also very clear that we believe a high school student-athlete should not be able to benefit as a professional for something that they don't own, and that would be the high school jersey, the high school uniform.

"While we recognize that high school age student-athletes have an ability to benefit from name, image and likeness, through contract relationships with a fiduciary, we are very clear that we do not support the situation that would involve another state association school and their student-athletes entering into a professional paid contracts while representing that member school.

"We know that there are private schools outside of the NFHS membership, where heavy-duty recruiting really active negotiations with contract agents are taking place."

There are 51 NFHS state association memberships, including Washington D.C. There are nine states -- California, Utah, Colorado, Kansas, Nebraska, Louisiana, New York, New Jersey and Alaska -- that allow NIL in high schools.

"Right now are state association regulations and bylaws are holding firm, that no student-athlete at a member school can become a professional paid student-athlete by virtue of their identity as a student-athlete at their schools," Niehoff said. "We want to make it very clear about where the NFHS stands on that. We hope that our position holds, because we really believe that the purpose of high school athletics and performing arts is not to develop professional athletes. It's to develop kids. It's to develop life skills. It's to develop relationships. And the high school locker room is arguably the last sort of pure bastion of amateurism within an education-based setting that's supportive and thorough. We want to protect that."

Title IX's 50th anniversary

The national federation has had a year-long campaign to get ready for the 50th anniversary of Title IX which opened the doors for women's sports in the summer of 1972, a law presenting equal opportunities.

Niehoff, who is the first woman to lead the NFHS, wants to make sure there is a lens kept on Title IX moving forward and what equity means.

"We have a lot of work out there to do still," she said. "The athletic ecosystem is a very transient one. New ADs and coaches, administrators are constantly coming and going as is our young people.

"We want to keep Title IX on the top of minds moving forward."

Title IX investigation: Falling short at 50 exposes how colleges still fail women

To suggest human-interest story ideas and other news, reach Obert at richard.obert@arizonarepublic.com or 602-316-8827. Follow him on Twitter @azc_obert.

Support local journalism: Subscribe to azcentral.com today

This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Officials, NIL, Title IX hot national high school sports topics