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Question on Travel Time...


aaluck
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For the high school level only...

We are having a big debate in our association.  Some of our current contracts require our umpires to travel between 1.5 to 2 hours, each way.  Several of us believe that this is absurd.  I do not believe that anyone should spend 4 total hours driving to do a high school event (I understand that college is a different story). I suggested that we use a 45-60 mile radius which is roughly an hour maximum each way. 

What is the average total travel time you guys experience?  What is the furthest distance your associations contract to call games?

Thanks for any input.

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I think it depends what part of the country you're in, specifically how rural your area is. For HS I personally would not want to drive more than an hour each way. If you were living in southern California, an hour would be a really long way for a high school game. But if you lived in Wyoming, I wouldn't think an hour drive is unreasonable or uncommon.

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When I was in Orange County, CA, travel was brutal. 1-2 hours was not uncommon, because of the traffic. I set my mileage to +/- 30 miles from my work, and then time blocks. 

Now that I am in TN, 45 minutes is no problem. Traffic here is nothing compared to SO CAL. I do think that 45-60 minutes is an acceptable amount of time, regardless of where you live. People have lives, and HS baseball is not a VOcation, it is an AVOcation.

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Max I drove for high school was usually no more than 30 mins. Mind you, I’m in SoCal and I have 10 schools within 15 mins. I wouldn’t be driving 2 hrs because another unit would have those games. Because alabama is so rural, I get those long drives but they better be giving you mileage on top of the game fees if they want you to drive that far. For college, I have 10 JCs within 45 mins and no D2 or 3 further than 2 hrs. It’s just different out here 

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For the regular season:  Our association has 32 high schools all within roughly an hour of one another...give or take.  It is possible that if one lives on the western edge of our geographical area that it could take 1.5 to 1.75 hours to drive to our easternmost school, and vice versa.  However, we try really, really hard not to assign guys to games that are that far from their location.  I can say that for 90% of our guys, they will average 30-minutes, one way, during the season.  Some games will be closer to home or work (say 15 minutes away), and others will be further (say 45 minutes away).  But, it will tend to average out at around 30-mintues over the course of a season.  Our geographic area is almost a perfect rectangle (it is longer east to west, and narrower north to south).  If you divide the rectangle into thirds (with a western, central, and eastern third), the vast majority of our schools are clustered in the central third (in the City of Columbia, SC and immediate suburbs).  Living and working in that central third...I have a lot of short drives from home or work.

However, when I lived for two years in rural North Carolina...the schools were spread out quite a bit and my average ride was much longer.  With that said, it led to a lot of times meeting up with my partner and riding together to the game.  I got to meet some great people, and become good friends with them, because of those rides!  They were a blessing in disguise.  You never know who you are riding with.  I have ridden with a few guys who have gone on to some incredible accomplishments in the officiating world...and not just baseball.  

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30 minutes is currently my max.  Anything more and I am not making it to the game on time due to my work schedule.

On a weekend I'll I take double-headers for a few particularly rural schools that have a hard time getting people.  Those are right at 60 minutes away.

Over 60 minutes?  We need to talk about compensation.  No way am I driving 2+ hours each way for a game check ... that is a full day of work when all is said and done.

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