PIAA board approves vaccine mandate for officials, doesn’t foresee shortage

By: Chris Harlan
Wednesday, September 15, 2021 | 6:57 PM

The PIAA does not expect its covid-19 vaccination mandate to cause a shortage of game officials since the new policy applies only to inter-district state tournament games.

“Our inter-district tournament is so much smaller in number of games compared to what goes on across the commonwealth on a day-to-day basis. We shouldn’t have any problem,” said PIAA assistant executive director Patrick Gebhart, who oversees officials.

The PIAA board met online Wednesday and officially adopted guidance from the PIAA Sports Medicine Advisory Committee that recommends “eligible student-athletes, coaches, athletic personnel and officials” be vaccinated against covid-19. The move comes a few weeks after Gov. Tom Wolf’s staff asked the PIAA to encourage its students to get vaccinated.

For most involved in high school sports, the PIAA’s vaccination recommendation is just that — a recommendation. However, the PIAA revealed Tuesday that it won’t let unvaccinated officials work its state tournament contests in all fall sports.

“The conditions that we are going to provide in our contracts, our officials are going to be requested to be vaccinated,” PIAA executive director Bob Lombardi said. “If they’re not vaccinated, we won’t assign them.”

Officials are employed as independent contractors.

The PIAA will let its 12 district committees decide independently whether to require officials to be vaccinated for district tournaments. The WPIAL board meets Monday but seems unlikely to adopt a similar mandate.

“We wanted to give them some flexibility,” Lombardi said of the district committees. “I think you’re going to see some of the districts have discussion about that and see where they want to go with that. In many cases, this is a trickle-down effect. They have a lot more games than we do, potentially.”

Gebhart noted that more than 1,200 officials attended an online PIAA officials convention in August, which is more than traditionally attended when the annual event was held in person. Attending the convention is a requirement to work PIAA postseason events. Online conventions are also scheduled for November and February.

The PIAA does not intend to require officials to prove their vaccination status beyond signing a game contract with that stipulation included among the terms for employment.

“An official’s word is their bond,” Lombardi said. “If somebody play loose and fast of that, the penalty could be severe. Meaning … you might not get games.”

Chris Harlan is a TribLive reporter covering sports. He joined the Trib in 2009 after seven years as a reporter at the Beaver County Times. He can be reached at charlan@triblive.com.