Photo: Thomson200 / Wikimedia Commons, CC0
When Iowa cleared high school baseball and softball to return in the summer of 2020, umpires had to decide whether to work.
Nate Boock, former Hampton-Dumont athletic director and AD at Ballard, and Mason City’s Scott Whitehill said they weren’t worried about calling balls and strikes again. But about 25 percent of officials, older and at higher risk, said they would sit out the season.
Losing a quarter of the officials pool made scheduling harder for athletic directors, who were already short of umpires before the pandemic.
Curt Hanneman writes for Clarion News Online.