With the start of a new sports season students and parents crowd the Friday night stands for a game of football. However, in recent years those Friday Night Lights have been pushed a day earlier to Thursday. This has been due to the official shortage happening to schools nationwide.
Ridgeview Highs first taste of Thursday night games happened last school year. But this year seems to see a lot more of Varsity football falling on Thursday nights. Ridgeview alone has had three back-to-back Thursday games against schools within our district. Ryan Tos, the Commissioner of CIF Central Section explains, “We are in a situation where there are more games than there used to be with new schools, but fewer officials.”
Although Thursday games have been a solution for the referee shortage it’s caused problems for students inside the classrooms. Gurpreet Nijjar, a junior and ASB commissioner of school spirit said, “I don’t have much time to study or do homework for the next day, whereas if the games were to be on a Friday, I could study and do homework to be prepared for the upcoming academic week.” Students involved in cheer, ASB, and on the football team are required to be at these games resulting in late nights in the crowd. “I know some [students] who didn’t show up to school from a previous Thursday night game,” added Nijjar
With circumstances like air quality delaying the games to an even later time. These students find themselves getting home close to 12:00 a.m. on a school night. “I’m so tired from cheering and a full school day I don’t want to go to school on Friday.” Anacelia Villareal, a junior on the Ridgeview’s Varsity cheer team said. With football on Thursday now having an effect on students in the classroom the severity of this issue is much larger than just a day earlier game.
The future of solving the referee shortage is unclear with a need of getting people to sign-up for official training. “Well I hope that the numbers will increase, but I think it will depend on how officials are treated by fans and coaches”, Tos adds, “the games literally cannot happen with them so they need to be treated with respect.” Parents or adults can sign-up to become an official through the Kern County Officials Association.
