Officiating JO matches--conflict of interest

[Todd <tdh@vbref.org>]

I'm interested in what can be done to prevent this situation in
tournaments: 


During my rating session this past weekend, I was R1 in a B18's
semi-final match.  The down officiating and line judging was done by a
team that had been eliminated from the tournament...but who were
club-mates of one of the teams in the semi-final.  Clearly, this was
not an ideal situation.  Not only was the down official not a
certified or experienced R2, he was a club mate with half the players
on the floor.

This situation made me scrutinze each call made by the R2 and the line
judges with a degree of suspicion.  Although these three performed
relatively well, I did overrule one line call that was clearly
incorrect.  I also had to make a rotation fault call on the receiving
team as the club-mate R2 repeatedly ignored or did not notice the
setter leaving very early from the back row.


Any ideas on how to address this?  I did call the officiating crew to
the stand during time outs twice during the match and verified that
they were clubmates with one of the teams.  I encouraged them to
perform their duties as impartially as possible and apologized for the
line call overruling.  They agreed, and cited that their team had
often been treated unfairly in similar situations in prior
tournaments.  

Other than that, what can be done?  Given that it's late in the day,
there aren't really replacements available for these positions.
Perhaps the tournament coordinator should prevent this situation by
assigning this crew to another concurrent match.


Ideas?

Best Regards,
--
                  Todd H.   tdh@vbref.org
USAV Regional Referee, Great Lakes Region, Palatine, IL
Todd's Volleyball Referee Page http://www.io.com/~tdh/vball/
"So you're a Ref and an engineer? Oh that explains it...."