tl;dr
I argue that there are three basic standards for tournament officiating which should be explicitly specified in bout contracts by the host league for a tournament, with the “regional” standard being today’s implicit default. I also provide a “minimal timeline” necessary (open your THO application 19 weeks before the tournament starts), to meet a reasonable expectation of a regional standard.
I conclude that leagues who cannot or do not meet that timeline should explicitly note that they will provide a “local” officiating standard, in their bout contracts, to temper teams’ expectations. This serves the interest of a more mutually supportive in-tournament environment.
Tournament Officiating Standards
In my view the most natural and intuitive way to conceptualize the overall officiating calibur provided tournament-wide is in terms of the breadth of experience of the officials in attendance. “Breadth” refers to how much officiating experience plus the variety of experiences necessary to develop adaptability and to have “seen” certain corners of the ruleset in order to be able to integrate tournament play in real time.
The most natural way to describe an officiating standard is Local, Regional, or Global, which map quite closely to certification levels for individual officials.
-
“Local” means – the folks who hang out locally, haven’t traveled much, do not have high game counts, and have not seen many edge cases. They will get the job done, and it will definitely “be derby,” but errors will be common and edge cases will be missed. Depending on temperament, this can drive some visiting teams up the wall.
-
“Regional” means – there will be a significant contingent of officials, on every crew, both on and off skates, who have seen enough of the different beliefs and styles and practices from around the region to be able to ameliorate concerns and ensure through consensus that consistency is achieved and errors are rare.
-
“Global” is like, Playoffs level, but that’s outside the scope of this post.
I’ll try to make a separate post about “officiating standards for tournaments” in the near future, but your intuitive understanding is sufficient for this post about timelines. (I use this categorization based on nine years on Certification Oversight and fifteen years of attending over 100 tournaments in all six WFTDA regions at all three of these levels.)
Bout Contracts and Implications
Having reviewed 50+ tournament contracts for Bay Area Derby (in my various capacities as Head Referee, Head of Officiating, Head of Finance, CFO, and Executive Director of Business), I have never seen any statement to set expectations regarding the breadth of skill that visiting teams should expect for tournament officiating. At most, they will note who will staff or note that the officials will “know the ruleset.” Some will state how officials will be selected, e.g. by the league or by a THO (but, these promises are often not followed, having been copy/pasted over the last two decades). However, having attended many of those tournaments, I have personally experienced evidence of what I think should be non-controversial: Most teams expect tournament officiating to be similar to what they regularly practice with at home scrimmages and home-team bouts, which implies an officiating standard broad enough to cover the various practices and people that the teams would have interacted with, and enough seasoned officials to be able to reach consensus on others.
When this expectation is not met, teams are disappointed in the officiating, which leads to a less enjoyable experience for all in the best case, or in the worst case, outright disrespectful treatment of officials who do not have the experience to “be better,” to meet expectations, or to handle the disrespect shown by athletes and coaching staff. While disrespect of officials is inherently problematic and widely regarded to be unacceptable, it somehow keeps happening, but in my view and experience, a lot of it can be prevented through correctly set expectations.
To whit, a bout contract can reasonably be assumed to imply the level of officiating that best matches the geographic diversity of the teams in attendance: Local, Regional, or Global, and to indicate explicitly whether they will or won’t follow the minimal timeline I provide for officiating staffing in the interest of meeting that expectation, and to argue that if the timeline is not followed, a Regional or Global expectation is not reasonable to set. Concretely:
-
If no officiating standard is listed, it should be assumed to reflect the breadth of invited teams;
-
If the timeline is not mentioned, it should be assumed to be met to that extent;
-
And that it is actively deceptive to fail to state an intended standard if there is no intent to meet the timeline.
Timeline
Having correctly articulated timelines for Rules, Certification, TOSP, and Competitive Play, whether or not they were accepted or followed, and by inspecting the last year or so of tournaments getting announced in this forum, on Facebook, and via the Derby Events Calendar for Officials, plus several conversations this year about staffing local games, seeking THOs for two local tournaments (Golden Bowl X and Cosmo Chaos), and discussions with other officials about “weird timelines” for tournaments seeking regional applications.
With the caveat that I am talking about the most common tournament structure and staffing process I see as an official, a crew head, and a tournament head, as of June 2025 (and that holistically different approaches to tournament staffing could produce very different timelines), fundamentally the moving pieces are unpaid humans with day jobs. Based on that:
-
People need to be able to plan ahead, but not too far. Close your application no earlier than 12 weeks in advance.
-
People need time to plan, to get good deals on travel and hotels, and to request PTO. Send officiating invitations no later than six weeks in advance.
Working from those two principles, I suggest the following timeline as necessary to have any reasonable chance to bring in the necessary breadth of officials (from around the region, who will need to travel to attend) to meet a Regional officiating standard. Put differently, if this timeline is not met, a tournament will likely only be able to recruit local folks and will provide a local officiating standard, which means non-local teams will likely be unsatisfied, leading to strife, frustration, and often (unfortunately) outright disrespect. It will be an overall worse time.
There is wiggle room in certain parts of the timeline, which I note inline. There are eight phases to staffing a tournament:
a. 19 Weeks – that’s four and a half months – Tournament dates are announced and THO application opens
- Example: For a tournament the weekend of August 11th, tournament announcement and THO applications should open on March 31st.
b. 15 Weeks – THOs are announced, and General Officiating applications open
- Example: For a tournament the weekend of October 11th, THOs should be announced on June 28th.
c. 11 Weeks – General Officiating applications close
d. 10 Weeks – Crew Heads are selected
e. 8 Weeks – Officiating invitations begin to be sent out
f. 6 Weeks – All officials are selected, declines are sent out
Showing my work in depth
[f] represents the minimum time to invite an official. Because initial applications could be declined and people need about a week to figure out if they can attend based on costs, any declines happen 7 weeks out, and then the next officials are invited, who also need a week. So, this phase needs to be two weeks after [e]. Wiggle room: Invite more officials than you need as ALTs who the THO is truly willing to swap in, and you can cut [e] to 7 weeks. Caveat: If you have a large pool of officials near to your area or who will be able to attend via low-cost transport such as established carpools or regular rail service (but not planes, the costs of which are unreliable less than six weeks out), this can be shortened to four weeks, but people still need to ensure they are able to travel or even to dedicate the weekend if they can commute home in the evenings.
For THOs and CHOs to be able to work together to staff, CHOs need to be shown application data two weeks in advance, hence [d]. During those two weeks, references will need to be contacted and collected, and one or two “staffing calls” will need to occur to ensure that everyone is on the same page and the crews are balanced. There are many ways to staff, but it is nearly impossible for six people to co-staff in under two weeks. Wiggle room: THOs may reduce the influence of CHOs in staffing and “make a call” or “pull rank” to get things back on time. In a non-collaborative case, THOs could also staff the entire tournament and CHOs discover that their crew is pre-staffed. This saves up to two weeks, but is fraught.
[c] is one week prior to [d] because it is understood that THOs need a week to contact references in order to choose Crew Heads, and contact them, and invite them, and invite back-ups. Wiggle room: If CHOs are stated to have an earlier deadline than other applicants, you can save one week, but expecting a CHO to accept more than 12 weeks in advance is unreasonable per above. Wiggle room: A THO could just DM invitations to CHO to their friends or preferred officials, but this significantly limits upward mobility for derby officiating overall and can be seen as nepotistic.
Many officials do not begin to seriously consider a tournament until the THOs are announced, which is why [b] is four weeks before [c], allowing the THOs four weeks to post and recruit CHOs and others, and allowing the general community four weeks to figure out whether the timing works for them. This is earlier than the 12 weeks some people need to be able to get their PTO cleared, but it is understood that it is ok to apply before you are certain you can attend. I do not see how wiggle room can be added here.
Another implication of the fact that many officials do not apply until the THOs have been announced is the simple fact that there will be other tournaments the same weekend and adjoining weekends, and officials are likely to apply to the first tournament that offers an application with THOs they want to work with, and very few officials will work two tournament weekends in a row due to either the time or money required to do so.
It is inappropriate for a league to release a general officiating application without THO sign-off, which is why there are two parts to [b], but there is wiggle room if THOs are selected and sign off on the general app prior to their own announcement. The same four weeks are required for the THOs themselves for the same reasons, with “conflicting tournaments” being extra important for officials with THO experience, so [a] is four weeks before [b]. Wiggle room: Simply invite THOs and do not offer an open application, to save these four weeks, but this is understood to be problematic. And of course, you can’t have THOs apply to a tournament they don’t know about, which is why [a] has two components. (You can, of course, open THO applications earlier, but you shouldn’t expect to get many applications until the tournament is soon enough for folks to plan ahead for.)
Example: If you want to have a tournament in mid-May, you need to announce and begin recruiting on New Year’s Day, nineteen weeks prior. And, anyone still recruiting THOs today, should not be hosting their event until October 11th. But at the same time, any tournament starting after September 20th shouldn’t be closing their application this weekend.
That’s it, that’s my opinion. What do you think?
