Each high school and junior high designates one person to assign officials for their athletic contests.  In many cases, especially at the junior high level, it is the athletic director.  For some sports, schools utilize the services of an independent assigner who will assign officials for a particular league or conference.  Therefore, it is recommended that beginning officials contact area junior high and high school athletic directors introducing themselves as a new official available for contests.  Experienced officials can follow the same process with area high school athletic directors and league assigners.  Names, addresses and telephone numbers of all member school's athletic directors can be accessed by using the online member school directory.

Click here to access the Member School Directory

Click below to access the list of OHSAA assigners in your sport

In addition, in the next few months the OHSAA will make available to school administrators an "Officials Needed" page on our web site.   School athletic directors can notify the OHSAA web master, Brenda Kyre, to post the need for officials for a particular contest, date and time.  This new service is very similar to the OHSAA "Open Dates" web posting which allows athletic directors to find opponents to fill their athletic schedules.  Officials are encouraged to utilize this tool to find regular season assignments.

Click here to view the "Officials Needed" page

• Sectional and district tournament officials must be assigned by either the District Athletic Board or an OHSAA Certified assigner employed to act as an agent of the District Athletic Board.
• An official's residence at the time of voting occurs shall be his/her "district of residence"
• Tournament officials shall be selected and assigned to sectional and district contests based upon the total votes received by each eligible Class 1 official. An eligible official must have an established "district of residence" within that athletic district in order to be assigned sectional and district contests.   Exception: when a sectional/district tournament combines competitors from two or more athletic districts, the host district will assign officials in proportionally to the percentage of teams competing from each athletic district.

• Assignments shall be made from those eligible Class 1 officials based upon a proportional representation where the percentage of Class 1 officials assigned from each athletic district is representative of the percentage of Class 1 officials in that sport from each athletic district.

  Example: There are 144 class 1 volleyball officials needed for the regional and state contests. If there are a total of 1205 class 1 volleyball officials in the state and 217 officials reside in the Central District then 18% of the 144 or 26 of the officials assigned will be from the Central District.

• In the sports of football, basketball, baseball, softball and volleyball, officials may not work successive state tournaments in the same sport.

• Officials are placed in the various pools based on a system involving input from coaches athletic directors, assigners, local associations, athletic board members and to a limited extent state office personnel.
  In order to receive a state assignment, an official must be in the state pool.
  In order to receive a regional assignment, an official must be in the state or regional pools.
  In determining regional assignments officials in the state and regional pools are considered to be on “equal footing”.  Officials in the state pool are not “ranked” higher for purposed of regional selection.
  Since the number of officials in the state and regional pools is more than twice the number of regional officials needed, in any given year less than half of the “qualified” officials will actually receive an assignment.
  Officials are selected from the pools based on a number of factors.  Efforts are made to have a balance geographically and to have a balance between veteran and younger officials.
  Input is received from a variety of persons in making the selections – state rule interpreters, assigners retired officials, etc.  The same individuals are not contracted each year so the input will vary.  These individuals consider the officials qualifications, physical condition, etc.  A certain preference may be given to officials who were not selected the previous year, to assure more people an opportunity. 
  The final decision on selections rest with the state office.

• Baseball
• Basketball - Boys
• Basketball - Girls
• Field Hockey
• Football
• Ice Hockey

• Fast Pitch Softball
• Soccer - Boys
• Soccer - Girls
• Swimming & Diving
• Volleyball
• Wrestling