Annual hunt for umpires continues

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This article was published 26/04/2023 (1122 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The never-ending search for umpires continues this spring, with baseball and softball both welcoming new officials and bidding farewell to some former stalwarts.

Bruce Luebke is the softball umpire-in-chief for the Westman-Parkland zone, which covers a massive swath of territory from Swan River to the north, the Saskatchewan border to the west, the United States border to the south to roughly around the Glenboro area to the east.

“All sports are suffering a shortage for the most part,” Luebke said. “What we’re seeing or hearing is that there were a lot of people during the pandemic who were officials and when their sports either got shut down or got reduced greatly, they found out there were other things they could do and just never came back.

“We’re still trying to get our numbers up to where they were previously.”

If there’s an organized baseball game played in the city, Jack Reynolds assigns the umpires. The baseball umpire-in-chief looks after Baseball Brandon, the Westman High School Baseball League and the Andrew Agencies Senior AA Baseball League.

Reynolds had a nice surprise with 10 new youngsters attending the Level 1 certification clinic held last Saturday and two taking it in Hamiota, giving him dozen new faces this summer. It’s the first time in several years he’s had that many newcomers, with eight to 10 generally more common.

With the higher-level guys mixed in, that gives him about 30 umpires.

“Thirty is about right,” Reynolds said. “I’m happy with the numbers. The new kids are just going to do mosquito and some who are old enough and playing bantam can do 13U. Then I have some kids who can do some 15U and the 18Us and stuff like that the adults will look after that.”

Reynolds said Baseball Manitoba’s role is paying for the certification clinics, including the instructor and all the materials that are used. Participants do pay a registration fee — it was $70 for Level 1 officials and $80 for Level 2 — with the money pumped back into training new umpires.

In addition, if a region is short of mentors, Baseball Manitoba will provide someone to help out.

Reynolds sent out an email to all the youngsters who umped last year and encouraged them to bring a friend. It’s also part of the registration package given to the more than 400 players who have registered with Baseball Brandon already.

Young umpires are paid $40 per game if they’re working alone, with the scale rising for the AAA and 18U levels. The youngsters are supplied with the chest protector and mask, and are required to purchase an indicator, an athletic supporter and shin pads if they want them.

He has a dozen Level 2 umpires coming back, which gives him nice depth in covering Baseball Brandon games. He will use some of his older teenage umpires on bases for 15U games when they have a two-umpire system.

“I have about four returnees who are going to be workhorses for me,” Reynolds said. “They’re gung-ho to do the mentorship program, which means they’ll go work with first-year umpires on the diamond once or twice or three times if the kid needs it. We pay a game fee to the mentors so it’s not like they’re doing it for nothing.”

There is a lack of umpires who can do the higher levels, however, with fewer than 10 who can work AAA, U18 and senior baseball. That may be a Westman-wide issue, with several umpires who did South West Baseball League games last season no longer available for a variety of reasons.

In addition, Reynolds is losing one of his veteran workhorses, Jules Xavier, who is retiring at the end of July and moving to B.C.

“It should be OK,” Reynolds said of his staffing. “I’m crossing my fingers that it is.”

He added the concern about having enough umpires is an annual concern.

Reynolds also refereed in hockey for many years and said the ups and downs are common to both sports.

“You have an overabundance one year and the next year you’re short,” Reynolds said. “It’s a rotating thing. I don’t know if it’s every three or four years or every two the cycle is but you can go from having enough umpires to cover everything that is going on and guys are only getting four or five games in the South West League and you don’t get playoffs because there are guys more senior than you who are doing them.

“Then the next year, guys are getting eight or 10 games because there aren’t enough.”

The umpires will get a bit of a break after a hectic summer last year when Baseball Brandon hosted five provincial events. With a new executive this year, they’re hosting one, the Prospects Showcases from July 28 to 30.

The city’s softball umpires also have some major events ahead of them.

Brandon has the U15 AAA provincials from July 27 to 30 and the AA provincials from Aug. 25 to 27, but the city is also hosting the national U15 championship from Aug. 9 to 13.

It will have plenty of reinforcements for the latter, with umpires coming in from across the country to complement the staff of 14 to 18. The event is expected to draw 20 to 24 teams.

Luebke is serving as co-chair of the host committee of the event, so the only local umpire on the field will be Akayla Veysey, with Brad DeGraeve serving as umpire liaison.

Luebke, who has been umpiring for 20 years and served as the regional umpire-in-chief for more than a decade, said the association currently has 36 umpires stretching across its massive zone, which is on par with last year. He said in a perfect world, there would be two dozen umpires just in Brandon.

“It’s not near enough, obviously,” Luebke said. “The one thing we battle with is in the smaller towns, they just basically use their registered baseball umpires to do the softball in their communities, which creates a whole new thing for me.”

He suggests that the two provincial governing bodies, Softball Manitoba and Baseball Manitoba, team up to jointly train incoming Level 1 umpires to widen their reach.

“Our philosophy for new umpires just starting is that you get the six crucial elements down first,” Luebke said. “So ball-strike, safe-out, fair-foul, right? Those are the exact same in both baseball and softball, so why wouldn’t you do some kind of combined clinic?”

He added umpires could specialize in softball or baseball as they move up in levels.

Brandon hosts three-hour Level 1 and 2 certifications on Saturday at the Ashley Neufeld Softball Complex, with Level 2 for veterans starting at 9 a.m., and Level 1 for newcomers beginning at 1 p.m. More information is available by emailing Luebke at luber@mymts.net

The eight rookies have already participated in one of two virtual sessions, but Luebke said no one will be turned away if they wish to show up on Saturday.

At the U11 level, the youngest division that uses umpires, an official makes $35 because the first half of the evening is spent practising, with an hour-long game to follow. It’s $40 for other Softball Brandon games, with $50 per game for AAA.

“If you’re an enterprising young person who wants to umpire, you can make quite a bit of cash over May and June doing house-league ball a couple of nights a week,” Luebke said. He said one of the issues he faces as UIC is trying to avoid scheduling a young umpire for a game involving players older than they are. Another conflict for young umpires is juggling their officiating work with school and their own athletics.

Luebke said the number of local umpires generally ranges between the mid-40s to the low 30s, so they’re not in an unusual position in that regard. But numbers alone don’t tell the whole story.

“What we’re finding is, the umpires we have aren’t quite as willing to be as busy as they once were,” Luebke said. “That’s been a bit of a crunch too. They’re willing to give you that one night a week but it’s pretty tough to do three nights a week or two nights plus a weekend.

“People talk about work-life balance, but it’s also about work-life-hobby balance too.”

He said recruiting adults is extremely difficult, with the ones who do show up often being former players or parents of players who want to stay involved with the sport.

Softball advances its umpires up the levels very quickly, with some of its second-year umpires doing U13 Westman Magic games this summer. He said the local association receives a lot of compliments for how much time it pours into mentoring its rookie umpires.

“We want to make sure they have some support from another official for their games and to help give them tips as they’re umpiring their first couple of games,” Luebke said. It can’t hurt to have a friendly face at a game.

While there have been much-publicized issues of parental abuse of officials across the sports world, Luebke said it hasn’t been much of an issue with Softball Brandon. A big part of that is the fact the right people understand it’s not just the players who are developing.

“I think most of the coaches at the house league level understand that the umpires are also learning,” Luebke said. “They’re going to make mistakes so you just have to move on from them. I don’t find that to be an issue at all. As you move up into the AA and AAA, it becomes a bit more (of an issue) but I don’t think it’s crazy.”

He said it’s the worst when teams are competing at the provincial level, with the unhappiness at its ugliest in lower-calibre events in the younger age groups, such as U11 A ball.

“That’s where the less experienced umpires get this first taste so it’s kind of a double-edged sword in some ways,” Luebke said. “For 98 per cent of them, they’re not going anywhere … and it’s not usually the players.”

The problem is, he said, that many parents simply don’t understand the rules and the ways in which they are different than baseball. Luebke said it wouldn’t hurt if rules sessions were also mandatory for coaches, adding he would welcome any coaches to training sessions simply as an observer.

It’s almost inevitable that the coaches will be seeing many of the same umpires again and again at the top events as some of the veterans stick around. It doesn’t help that the constant search for new umpires is a problem that isn’t going away any time soon.

“We have turnover every year, to be honest,” Luebke said. “People come and try it and decide it’s not for them or get busy, especially for the teenagers who come and try it. It’s constant recruit, recruit, recruit and try to retain. If you do happen to get a younger person who sticks with it for three or four years, when they finish high school that’s often when they drop out because they get busy with other things.

“It’s constant churn.”

» pbergson@brandonsun.com

» Twitter: @PerryBergson