BCFOA OKANAGAN ALLOCATOR REPORT DECEMBER 2009

We have reached the end of another season of football, and with the approach of Christmas we reflect on the blessings in our lives. One of those blessings is the chance to work with the brotherhood of officials for many months. As always we have issues, but as a group we work to minimize these challenges and improve as officials both personally and collegially. I would like to thank every one of you for the positive influence you bring to football in B.C.

In the Southern Interior, we continue to have challenges filling Junior Varsity games, due mainly to the early afternoon start times. Again, the local high schools were very accommodating for rearranging schedules, as limited officials meant we were only able to fill one game per day in Kelowna. A big thank you to coaches that were willing to be flexible and to those officials that were able to take time out of their work day (or retirement day) to fill these games.

A continued challenge continued to be varsity football in Penticton, as we continue to need the development of local officials there. Kelowna simply cannot fill this void with the number of varsity and Community games here, and the travel from Kamloops and Salmon Arm is simply too far to be realistic. Unfortunately, this need was alleviated with the folding of the Pen Hi team part way through the season, but this is not a solution that we want to see. We would love to see varsity football succeed in Penticton, but there needs to be a commitment from the local parties involved to address the officiating issues. We cannot rely on other areas to fill this need.

Locally, the amount of community ball was significantly down this year due to less teams in the league. Initially, I thought this would alleviate some of the issues with filling games that we had last year. However, a number of injuries to key officials resulted in still having some issues with assignments. Again, however, the league was fairly receptive to making changes to minimize these issues.

At the BCFC and CIS level, the Interior continued to play a valuable role. The number of Interior members on these panels continues to grow, and I look forward to adding more officials in the future as our members get more experience. A big congratulations to Rick Nykorak and Bert Ducharme for a successful “rookie” year at BCFC. The recent decision for Simon Fraser to abandon their involvement in CIS will definitely present more challenges for young officials to reach the CIS level. However, rumours continue to circulate about the Okanagan Sun joining CIS through UBC Okanagan, so we will wait and see how that develops over the next few years.

Congratulations to all members for a great year and congratulations for all the playoff games obtained from atom through BCFC. I look forward to working with you all in the seasons to come. Spring scrimmages start in just over 4 months, so enjoy the offseason and reacquaint yourself with your family.

Respectfully submitted

Darryl Hern

Okanagan Allocator