Category Archives: Training

2026 Training Schedule Published

The Training Schedule for the 2026 season has been published in grid form under the Members Only section and on the calendar. Classes held online and in classroom settings will be recorded and links to those recordings will be published on the grid schedule along with any hand outs. Scrimmage assignments will be last minute and may be canceled last minute for a multitude of reasons so stay alert. Any questions please contact Brian Sweet your friendly training director.

RTO returns for 2025

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

The Season is Upon Us

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.

Please Fill Out Your MSA Today!

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.

2025 Training Schedule published

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”.

2024 Training has Started

The training for the 2024 season has already started. Our new apprentice class has already had their first two sessions but there is still time to get in on the action if you fill out our application ASAP.

For our returning umpires, the training schedule can be found under the Members/Training menu item or by using the website Calendar. A little known trick when using the Calendar is you can use the search function to create a tier specific schedule for yourself. Just open the Calendar and type in your tier into the search box at the top. The magic words are Apprentice, C-Tier, B-Tier, A-Tier and T-Tier.

RTO returns

NBUA

Every year 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.

  • Go into the Central Hub (again)
  • Click on the Eligibility Center
  • Click on RTO 2023
  • 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’d, in order to become eligible to 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.

Thanks

Mark Clough

NBUA Assignor

2023 Training Videos Available

All of our classroom sessions are being recorded these days and the videos are all available on the Training Schedule page accessed via the Members/Training menu. The members password is required to access this page.

In the table that lists the training events, the column on the right hand side labeled “Links” will be populated with the video link as the sessions are held. At this time, no training credit is given for viewing these classes after the fact, but they can be used to catch-up or review.

Apprentice and C-Tier umpires are welcomed to watch classes held for the higher tiers just to inform themselves of the subjects being discussed. Upper tier umpires might be interested to view classes for the lower tiers to answer the question, “what the heck are they teaching these guys?”

Your Humble Webmaster