With CHSAA moving the start of all springs sports back to later in the year, CWLOA training for the 2021 High School will also be pushed to later than in past years. The NFHS/USL training for more experienced officials will begin in late January and continue through February. Training for less experienced and new officials will begin in late February and continue through March. All training that previously was done in a classroom setting will occur via Zoom conferences. Now all CWLOA members from across the state and region will be able to participate in the same sessions.
To become a USL certified official for the 2021 season, all officials must:
1.complete 6 hours of classroom training, including the required Rules Interpretation session
2.take and pass the 2021 USL/NFHS Rules exam
3.have taken at least once the USL online officials’ training class (again, you only need to have taken this once, not every year)
4. be a member of US Lacrosse for 2021
To be certified for high school games sanctioned by CHSAA (e.g., to be included in the CHSAA Arbiter system and receive CWLOA training), you must have paid your CWLOA dues and your CHSAA dues. If you will not be officiating CO high school games, just pay the CWLOA dues.
New officials with no women’s lacrosse or officiating experience should plan for between 6 and 8 hours of classroom time.
Due to COVID-19, the on-field training (Play Day) requirement may be waived. The CWLOA leadership is attempting to arrange for local on-field opportunities before or shortly after the start of the season. The intention is to allow for some for preseason training for new officials and to knock the rust of for veteran officials.
There are two ways you can obtain classroom training this year:
1) by attending the training sessions CWLOA will provide during January through March, or
2) by virtually attending all relevant officials training sessions presented by USL at 2021 LaxCon LaxCon this year is a virtual conference. You can find details on the USL web site.
If you do the latter, USL will let us know that you completed classroom training there.
All officials must attend this year’s virtual CWLOA Rules Interpretation session that will be held between mid-March and early April. Along with reviewing any new rules interpretations, there will be sessions on setting up and using Arbiter to get game assignments and payments, our Observations and Ratings plan, Diversity and Cultural Competency training, and general CWLOA business.
One of our goals for this year’s training will be to make it easier for every official to attend only sessions that are most relevant to your experience in officiating. We will cover the same material for everyone, but the emphasis in each session will be better tuned to the level of those attending it. When we send out the training session schedule, it will include recommendations for which sessions you should try to attend to best match your level of experience.