The most recent meeting of the executive board of the Oregon School Activities Association came with a big update showing a reversal of a year’s-long trend that threatened high school sports in Oregon.

An update from the Oregon Athletic Officials Association announced on Monday that the number of high school sports officials in Oregon is nearly back to pre-pandemic levels.

With baseball and softball officials still to be counted, the OAOA has 2,935 officials signed up for the 2024-25 school year.

The total number of officials in Oregon last year was 3,582, but that includes baseball and softball officials. Without those two spring sports added, the total last year was 2,846. So in all, the number of officials in 2024-25 is on pace to be another annual increase.

“Definitely heading in the right direction,” said OSAA Assistant Executive Director Kelly Foster during the executive board meeting on Monday as she spoke on behalf of the OAOA.

Oregon’s referee shortage in recent years has been part of a greater nation-wide trend that has seen referee numbers drop drastically over the last decade.

In the 2010-11 school year, Oregon had 4,412 officials signed up with the OAOA. This included 826 for football, 451 for volleyball, 494 for soccer, 1,389 for basketball, 246 for wrestling, 568 for baseball and 438 for softball.

That number started to decline over the years with the 2016-17 school year having 3620 officials.

But the COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated the decline drastically. In the 2020-21 school year, there were 2,552 officials in the state and while that number rebounded a little as sports opened up more in the 2021-22 school year (3,023) it was still a dramatic dip from where it had been before.

One very noticeable way to see that trend in Oregon was a stark increase in Thursday night football games in the fall. This allowed referees to double dip games every week to make sure there were enough officials for each contest.

In the 2024 fall season, the number of Thursday night games dropped as the number of football referees increased up to 690. This is up from just 537 in the 2020 fall season and 665 last year.

Foster attributed the increase in officials statewide to recent increase in payment to referees for their work. The OSAA has an officials fee review committee and an officials recruitment and retention committee that has helped increase pay for referees over recent years.

Jack Folliard, the executive director of the OAOA said that officials are still needed in every sport. He added that wrestling might be the hardest sport to find new referees in.

The OSAA and the OAOA also created a website to make it easier to sign up to become a referee. NewOfficials.org allows anyone who wants to sign up to become an official to very quickly get the process started.