Taunton athletic director Mark Ottavianelli is nicely conscious of the referee scarcity within the Commonwealth and is doing his half to assist the trigger.
Taunton High School has supplied a Sports Officiating Class on the college in hopes of engaging youthful women and men to contemplate officiating. Much like some other course on the college, college students obtain grades for the category in addition to from RefRaps, an officiating educating system. As of now, there are 20 college students enrolled within the course.
“There were two reasons why we started it,” stated Ottavianelli, who defined the initiative at Thursday’s MIAA Board of Directors assembly. “The first is that it provides students an opportunity to become officials, which will hopefully help with the officiating shortage. Secondly, being an inner city school, it gives our kids an opportunity for employment, a chance to make some money.”
Ottavianelli credit Chris Green, a group liaison for the Taunton Public Schools and an assistant basketball coach at the highschool.
“This was Chris’ idea from the start,” Ottavianelli stated of Green, who starred for legendary boys hoop coach Mike Rubin at East Boston within the mid-Eighties. “He’s the events manager here at the school when we do rentals. He saw an opportunity and asked why we couldn’t have some of our kids officiating the events.”
Ottavianelli is aware of all about officiating at an early age, having achieved video games whereas a scholar on the former Southeastern Massachusetts University (now UMass Dartmouth).
“It was better than working for a living,” Ottavianelli stated with amusing. “Not all of us can play at the college level and fewer at the pro level, so this was a way to stay in a sport you loved as a kid and make some extra money.”
Prior to the beginning of the MIAA Board of Directors assembly, there was a ceremony during which one of many rooms was renamed the Gaine Conference Room in honor of longtime MIAA govt Bill Gaine. Gaine spent 42 years with the group in quite a lot of totally different roles, the newest being the manager director earlier than retiring two years in the past.
In different MIAA Board of Directors information, the committee voted unanimously upon MIAA govt director’s Bob Baldwin advice to approve the structure for one more 12 months. Baldwin pointed to what he felt have been optimistic actions made towards the general construction and adopted up with the remark: “if we don’t stand for something, we stand for nothing.”
MIAA assistant director Jim Clark stated progress was being made towards revamping the MIAA web site. He stated the group is working with Gravity Works, an online firm primarily based in Michigan. One of the promoting factors is that Gravity Works are being utilized by seven totally different state associations which are conscious of the MIAA wants.
MIAA affiliate govt director Sherri Bryant offered an replace on state ultimate and semifinal venues. Her objective is to get the very best websites and have them introduced upfront, declaring that subject hockey can be performed at WPI, soccer at Gillette and volleyball at Worcester State.
