By John Clark
A shortage of umpires is causing cancellations of junior varsity baseball games for both Bladen schools. Both the East Bladen at South Columbus and West Bladen at West Columbus JV games that were scheduled for Friday afternoon were cancelled.
“It is a national, not just a statewide problem,” said Southeastern Sports Officials Baseball Regional Supervisor Mike Parnell. “We are short about 55,000 officials for all sports nationwide according to the National Federation. All of the regional associations in the state are short on baseball umpires.”
The reason JV games are being cancelled is that the early start times are tough for officials to get off of their regular jobs early enough to make a 4 p.m. start. Some alternatives might be to start JV games later (maybe at 5 p.m.) and put a time limit on them, but there is still the shortage to contend with and the problem of pushing the varsity games back makes for a long night.
Also there are a lot of older officials who are retired from their regular jobs, and they tend to migrate to softball where the games are shorter (time-wise) for comparable pay.
“We are going to keep beating the bushes and looking for more umpires,” said Parnell. “Anyone interested in becoming an official can contact me at 910-234-4512.”
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