Across North America leagues have run into issues with a shortage of qualified referees. Youth sports has suffered greatly with this shortage, with some leagues even having to contract age groups due to a lack of officials. Many attribute this shortage to an increase in abuse of officials have faced over the recent years.
Some leagues across Canada and the United States have started to have officials wear different colored uniforms to indicate when an official is a minor. While this seems like a great concept but all it does is in theory is increase the amount of abuse older officials receive, and while they can usually take it sometimes things boil over even beyond what has been deemed acceptable.
This treatment of officials is only going to continue to push officials further and further away from the game. Ultimately this is going to create a hole where well trained officials will be replaced with whoever is available, and lead to more issues. Abuse of officials has become a problem nation wide and needs to be fixed.
