NY Metro ISOA News

Passing the NISOA Fitness Test

In 2003, NISOA completely revised the events in their physical performance test. The new events, 12 minute run, “The Pro-40 Test”, “Brazilian AR 50 meter test” and “The 30 meter shuffle” were developed based on the findings of leading researchers in the field of Soccer Referee Physiology. New scoring criteria were developed. In 2005, NISOA revised their policy to require renewing members to pass the fitness test with a minimum average score of 1.0 for the 4 individual events to maintain their member “in good standing” status. A full description of the policy, fitness tests and scoring criteria is available here.

The current NISOA policy as well as the current terms of our constitution allows the chapter (at its discretion) to place a renewing member who does not pass the fitness test under probation and assigned a game as an official for assessment purposes. This provision works well where there is a traditional NISOA Chapter Assignor. However, the NY Metro Chapter does not have a chapter assignor. Games are assigned exclusively by conference assignors such as ECAC, ISOAB, Atlantic 10, and Region XV. The chapter’s executive board cannot ensure members who fail the fitness test will have an opportunity to be assigned a game for assessment purposes. It’s a Catch 22.

Our chapter’s constitution has not been updated to reflect the NISOA policy change. The executive board will prepare an amendment to the constitution for presentation to the membership during the first business meeting in 2007. This amendment is intended to bring chapter requirements in line with national policy. The executive board will propose that members who do not pass the fitness test will:

• Not be “in good standing”,
• Be placed in probationary status, and
• Be permitted to take the fitness test within six months to regain their status as an active member if they achieve a passing score.

There will not be a provision for an on field assessment to restore active member status.

The majority of conference assigning is complete by the time we administer the fitness test in June and July. After the July fitness test, our chapter forwards a list of members “in good standing” to the conference assignors. The Executive Board is not required to forward the results of the fitness test to the conference assignors. Members who fail the fitness test face a significant risk of losing their assignments at the discretion of the conference assignors. There’s no guarantee that these assignments will be restored if a member retakes the fitness test and subsequently passes it.

What does this all mean? Get yourself physically ready for the fitness test and pass it. Stay fit for the upcoming season. It’s our responsibility as officials to be physically capable to do our job.

This entry was posted on Saturday, December 30th, 2006 at 11:15 am and is filed under Executive Board with keyword(s) fitness,physical,test. You can follow any comments to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a comment, or right-click and copy this location to trackback from your own site.