RTO returns
NBUA
Every year at about this time, I am directed by your Board of Directors, to reintroduce the RTO Program driven by the Washington Officials Association (WOA). I’m asking the following of every NBUA member, regardless of tier. All tiers are asked to participate in RTO.
The RTO Program
The RTO Program is a collaborative effort of the Washington Interscholastic Activities Association and the Washington Officials Association to improve the level of officiating for WIAA contests. RTO stands for Retention, Training and Observation. There is one other component of this program not listed in the RTO acronym. That component is standards. Before you can hold someone accountable you must clearly state what they are being held accountable for. To that end, the WOA is developing standards of conduct and performance for our members in each sport covered by the WOA. These standards are the yardstick by which every official will be measured. Reminder that WOA Postseason games are for A & TT umpires.
- Go into the Central Hub
- Click on the Eligibility Center
- Click on 24-25 Postseason Baseball
- Complete the 2 clinics listed
- I did this. It took about 7 minutes.
- Pretty simple…
- Every tier is asked to get this done by your BOD
- B, A and TT umpires are required by the WOA to become RTO qualified, in order to become eligible to be assigned:
- Post Season District contests
- Regionals
- State Finals
- District contests begin in early May
- Rookie & Transfer Members, please contact your Mentors for additional assistance. Your Mentors have all done this before.
- Please have your RTO requirements completed by May 1.
- As your Assignor, I can track this ongoing.
Mark Clough
NBUA Assignor
206.265.1896
This coming weekend (March 7-9) will be the beginning of the Seattle High School baseball season. It starts with jamborees and then gets down to playing games that count next week. This is also, generally, the end of the training season for our new NBUA umpire class. Our apprentices have spent the past 6 weeks working hard to learn the rules and the mechanics that will let them succeed on the field.
We are always on the lookout for new recruits to bring into our umpiring community and when people start to see kids out on the fields playing games we often get a flood of applicants through our site. Unfortunately, because our training season is over, many are simply too late to get them on the fields. Unless you have prior experience through the NBUA or a similar organization elsewhere in the country, we simply can’t take the time away from game play to train the late comers. Our customers expect a certain level of competence from us and we can’t sacrifice that even though we are continually shorthanded.
However, if you are looking to get on the field as an official, do not despair. If you apply with us, we will keep your name on a list and make sure to call you next year before our training season starts again. In the meantime, your local Little League or PONY League usually has a program starting about now to bring new umpires into some very junior level contests for the youngest players. Experience in those games will be a boon to your neighborhood and good practice for you going forward into our more advanced levels of play in years to come.
The National Federation of High Schools has posted their 2025 rules interpretation here
2025 Baseball Points of Emphasis:
What High School Umpires Need to
Know
The NFHS has released its 2025
Points of Emphasis, highlighting five
key areas that umpires must focus on
this season.
This is the current list of tournaments that we know of so far this year. These are particularly busy times for our organization and we generally need more umpires to do more games during these periods than any other times so please plan to be available these dates if at all possible. There will certainly be games at other times but, not as many.
Art Wright Memorial Day Tournament
May 22-26
Cardinal Classic
May 28-June 1
-18u-
Cam Christian Memorial
June 5-8
Father’s Day Classic
June 12-15
Battle of the Bats
June 19-22
State Championships
June 26-29
Firecracker
July 3-6
College Showcase
July 8-13
-18u-
Carson Styron Memorial
July 10-13
R. Widman – “Strike out the Stigma”
July 17-20
Season Finale
July 24-27
2025 NIKE RBI Tournament
July 25-27
Auburn HS
Auburn Mt. View HS
Hogan Park
Kent Meridian HS
Thomas Jefferson HS
Your assignor, Mark Clough, really needs all current members to fill out the Member Services Agreement as soon as possible. You can find it at this link or under Member/MSA. You will need to use the members password to open up the MSA document, read it, and then click on the link at the bottom which will take you to the actual signature form. You fill out your name and e-mail, submit and that’s it. EZ PZ
You cannot be assigned games until this is done. You also need to go into Arbiter and mark yourself as “Ready to Assign” so that Mark can see you as available. Make sure that you have any blocks in place at that time. The High School Test will come out next week and we will have meetings to tell everyone more about that.
This will be another online Zoom class.
Subjects to be covered include:
Baseball rules – 8.00 the pitcher
MLB Rules (non-runner, pitcher, batter)
MLB Rules: Batter Rules
Base Awards
WOA Umpire Mechanics
The training schedule has now been posted and, as in the past, it can be viewed in two ways. It can be viewed on the Calendar or it can be viewed by members on the Training Schedule table. The Training Schedule table requires a member login because we will post the videos of the online meetings there if anyone wants to “catch up”. The Calendar is available to all.
To use the Calendar efficiently, you can use the search function to view only those items that concern your tier by typing in your tier name i.e. Apprentice, C-Tier, B-Tier, A-Tier or T-Tier.
The Calendar can be found under the Information menu dropdown and the Training Schedule table is found under the Members menu drop down “Training”.
For B-Tier, A-Tier and T-Tier umpires who will be assigned games in the upcoming High School playoffs, this is a chance to brush up on your 3-Man field mechanics. All umpires are welcomed to attend.
This will be an online session so watch your e-mail for the login details
The High School Season starts this weekend and often these matches will involve round robin games that put three teams on a field and they play 3 inning games until all 3 teams have each played 6 innings. Or they might just play normal games. You ask the coaches. Apprentice umpires are generally paired with their mentors for these games.
