Coaches Officials Votes Only Used to Build the Tournament Pool of Officials

There was a time under Charlie Wotton, Del Merrill and Mike Direnzo, all former Maine Basketball Commissioners that coaches turned in a list of 10 officials that they would like to see work their post season tourrrnament games.

This was always done so that teams would be guaranteed at least 1 official of their list of 10.

I know that when they were commissioners that I always got an official off my list for every tournament game we played including the state finals.

Now under the current Commissioner the list of officials turned in by the coaches are only used to build the pool of tournament officials.

Word has it that the number of coaches turning in the tournament list is way down. This is because many of the coaches know that it means nothing in regards who they will get in tournament games, as it is used only to build the tournament list of officials to work the tournaments.

Also, under Del Merrill, there was accountabliity and transparency as the officials received an information sheet at the end of the tournament stating how many total votes they got from the coaches by class and by sex.

Del Merill was the best commissioner of the four we have had as he was an excellent official, college coach, athlketic director who saw both sides of the river and the river itself in the assignment of tournament officials….not just from the officials side of the river.

It was too bad that he only served for 3 years as when he became president at Husson College he had to resign the position.

I may be biased because I played for Del at Husson, but he always told me that “a good official knows the rule book, and then he throws it away and uses plain old common sense”.

When the change in not using the coaches lists to assign tournament gamesoccurred when I was coaching in the 90’s I used to turn in a list of officials that I knew the Commissioner thought were good officials, but I did not. This way I had a chance of getting someone because they were not on my list.

I also knew that the officials that I wanted would get enough votes to make the tournament pool.

Pretty poor when I had to resort to that to get officals that I wanted to work my tournament and state final games.