Water polo has a nice problem when it comes to officials: The growth of the game at every level has put the services of officials at a premium.

"We are short of the number of officials available simply because of the growth of the sport," said Tom Tracey, director of officials for the Collegiate Water Polo Association. "There are a lot more games being played at every level."

The Collegiate Water Polo Association assigns officials for the East and Midwest for men's and women's NCAA-level games, club-level, high-school and other tournaments. The conference had 82 member teams in 1995 and now boasts 211.

Covering a greater geographic area and more games has forced the conference to focus resources on making it the best experience possible for current officials and identifying and training prospective candidates.

Pay increases have been approved to help retain officials, too. The pay for varsity officials was $45 last year, $47.50 this year and will be $50 in 2003-04.

"We need to continue to try to pay officials as much as possible without compromising our fiscal integrity," said Mike Schofield, head men's water polo coach at the U.S. Naval Academy. "Officiating in water polo is not a lucrative venture, but we want to make it as financially and professional rewarding as possible."

Tracey said it has been a challenge to continue to make officiating a financial gain as more and more travel is involved.

"Having to fly to sites for a lot of these officials means eating their own cash," he said. "We pick up the rental car for the weekend and the hotel at every site. If the official has to fly, we will pay $30 per diem on top of the games fees. If they make $320, they may pocket $110. For a weekend's worth of time, it isn't much."

The added air travel has made recruiting new officials in certain pockets of the country as important as accommodating the greater number of officials in demand.

Generating demand

As with officiating in many sports, becoming a water polo official could never be mistaken as a get-rich-quick scheme. Because the financial upside is limited, the recruiting program to attract and train new officials is about making the process as easy and inexpensive as possible.

"Water polo referees can have more of an impact on the outcome and quality of the game than in any other sport," Schofield said. "Compared to team sports played on land, what goes on in the water is quite difficult to see and interpret clearly. A good official makes a world of difference in our sport where the levels of physical contact, intensity and emotion often run very high."

Clinics are sponsored in conjunction with many senior-level tournaments to identify potential officials from the student-athlete ranks. Coaches are alerted to the clinics to help identify and encourage players to consider officiating.

"From a selfish prospective, I want to see referees on our games who have a good understanding of our sport," Schofield said.

Collegiate coaches, like Schofield, use alumni lists and other e-mail lists to send out information on officiating opportunities. The free, two-hour clinics provide participants with a rules book and some basic information, and the opportunity to watch games and ask questions. Potential officials are tested for knowledge of the rules before an assignment is made.

For someone new to the sport, high-school or age-group games might be the first step to learning the game and officiating. The conference works to accommodate potential officials regardless of previous experience.

The conference provides each of its officials with a "care package" to get started, which includes a newsletter about rules, rules interpretations and other officiating guidelines, red cards and yellow cards for game situations, contact information for the conference and protest procedures, a rules book and a conference polo shirt.

Tracey hopes to recruit five new officials per year.

Getting organized

Retaining and recruiting new officials would not be possible if it weren't for changes in the officiating organizations since 1995 when a separate officiating bureau was in place to assign games.

An organization called the Eastern Water Polo Referees Association handled all officiating issues and contracted each year with coaches and leagues. Accountability and pay issues halted those negotiations in 1995.

"If an official was late, you called this bureau, but you would never know if the person had been reprimanded or not," said Dan Sharadin, commissioner of the Collegiate Water Polo Association. "You would have the same person on your game again. This went on until 1995 when the referees came to negotiations demanding a fairly substantial amount of money to maintain the officiating core."

The coaches refused the pay hike and the referees walked, leading to a rough year for water polo coaches, who on occasion were forced to officiate games for other institutions.

"We went through some hard times for about a year and a half, but most of the officials have come back," Schofield said. "It was a difficult time for everyone, but the bottom line is that almost all of the officials we wanted to keep in the loop are with us."

Through the conference now known as the Collegiate Water Polo Association (formerly the Eastern Water Polo Association), an officiating program was created with a non-referee and non-coach as the director. A board of directors, which includes athletics directors, has been set up to help with accountability, and to serve as a neutral party in issues with an official or a coach.

"All of the policies now have the input of the colleges, and I think (officials) are treated better now," Sharadin said. "Yet, that was the hold-up because officials thought if the institutions were in control they would never get adequate pay or benefits."

The officiating program was created before the sport really began its current growth, which was fortunate timing.

"We would never have been able to accommodate all of the collegiate club-level and varsity-level assignments that we have now under the old bureau," Sharadin said. "It's a constant struggle to keep up with the growth in the sport. It is a nice problem to have."