Friday Night Lights turning on for now

The Friday Night Lights will be turning on this week for the start of the new prep football season. They may not always go on for each scheduled Friday game, however.

Bureau Valley had to move its scheduled opener from Friday night to Saturday for a 5 p.m. kickoff.

Mendota has already switched out three games from Friday night, with two moving to Saturday and one to Thursday.

Hall will play on a Saturday in Week 2.

All because of a shortage of officials. And it only promises to be an ongoing issue the rest of the season and for years to come in the state.

As the core of the state’s established officials age and hang up their whistles, it’s becoming harder and harder to fill their spots with incoming younger officials.

“I think it’s just the beginning of a long-term problem we may have because of the overall shortage of officials in pretty much everything we do. Doesn’t matter if it’s football, basketball, soccer,” second-year Bureau Valley athletic director Brad Bickett said.

“I think the better officials that have been around all the years are now retiring and getting out and there’s just not a younger group large enough to supplement what’s leaving us. It’s really creating some problems and some schools are really going to have to show some flexibility with their schedule.”

Longtime official Ken Wilcoxen, 63, of Princeton, who has worked state finals in multiple sports, including football, has seen the officials shortage first hand. He is a member of the Rock River Officials Association, which stood 95 strong 10 years ago and now has just 44. His son, Kris, is one of the youngest members at 38. They have one member who still umps softball at age 84.

Wilcoxen’s crew was offered three games this Saturday and will be working the Bureau Valley-Riverdale game. He is also working F/S games every Monday.

“(The shortage) is only going to get worse,” he said.

The Three Rivers, like most conferences, utilize assigners for football, basketball and baseball to fill up their needs of officials. The Three Rivers assigner put out a request for schools to help move games as needed and BV was more than willing to move its opener.

“The last thing we wanted to do was keep our scheduled game and not have officials show up,” Bickett said. “Moving forward, if we have to move some stuff, we will. Between shortage of officials and shortage of kids participating in activities, it’s left coaches and athletic directors’ heads spinning a little bit.”

Mendota, a newcomer to the Three Rivers this year, stepped up to move three of its football games off Friday nights. It will now be hosting Hall on Saturday, Sept. 25, at 2 p.m. and Newman on Saturday, Oct. 14, and playing at St. Bede on Thursday, Oct. 21.

Mendota athletic director Steve Hanson said the conference assigner gave each school a number of games each week that he couldn’t fill. All the teams in the conference then got together and the subsequent changes were made.

“Week 5 and 6 were big problems so we moved our game with Hall to Saturday. We were one of the few games that was not a homecoming game so we moved that game,” he said. “The Newman game was the first game we moved just trying to do our part to help out and then the final week. St. Bede asked if we could move that as well.”

“I hope that we don’t have any more changes, but if the last year has taught me anything — changes can come at a minute’s notice,” said St. Bede athletic director Nick McGlaughlin about the Bruins, who already have a scheduled Saturday afternoon game per their homecoming tradition.

Another local contest affected was Hall Week 2 date at Monmouth-Roseville, which will now be played at 6 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 4.

Bickett understands that officiating is not the easiest thing to attract people to get into having to be in the fish bowl with often animated spectators.

“I wish the IHSA could come up with some incentives to get a broader ranger of younger kids to do it or some sort of better recruiting message to try to get people to participate and get a little more active,” he said. “Most of those veteran officials are pretty thick skinned and have done it for years. They really they don’t let some of our spectators bother them. For a new guy early on in their career, having a spectator get after them a little bit, it’s a little bit of a challenge.

“Overall, I think we’ve got to come up with some resolution or incentive to get people to come out and join and be a part of an officials organization and the IHSA to help us out, because moving forward it’s going to be harder for us to get officials.”

Hanson said he saw the officials shortage arise last year in baseball.

“We had a really hard time rescheduling and actually played a few games with one umpire, even at the varsity level. The problem is not going away and I believe we will see some issues in many sports this year,” he said.

Princeton High School athletic director Jeff Ohlson said, at this time, the only sport he’s had some difficulty in finding officials is soccer as it has a small pool of officials to pick from and Princeton’s geographic location is not the best. Unlike football and basketball, there is not an assignor that schedules officials for soccer.

“Moving forward, I do anticipate it to be a situation that we will need to monitored and potential adjustments made when the time arises,” Ohlson said.