Let’s get straight to the point: high school field hockey has an officials shortage.
In 2025, officials across several sports, not just field hockey, face scrutiny. Field hockey participation is growing. But the number of officials is not.
Warren Nuckols, the commissioner of the Central Virginia Field Hockey Officials Association, said, in order to keep up with how the sport is growing, he needs more officials.
“This year Varina got a team back, Hopewell got a team back, King William started a team,” Nuckols said. “We gained three more schools, we didn’t gain more (officials).”
Nuckols has been around field hockey for about 20 years. His daughter, Kathleen, played at Thomas Dale from 2006 to 2009, during the time the Knights picked up four straight district and regional championships.
Kathleen got involved with field hockey in middle school and Nuckols, who had officiated basketball up to that point, said he got “sucked into it,” in regards to both coaching and officiating field hockey — he loves the technical aspect of the sport.
He coached field hockey and officiated until his daughter graduated and still officiates now. As commissioner, Nuckols handles all things field hockey officiating in the 804, working with the assigner to decide where to send officials, among other things.
“I’m the one that runs the circus,” Nuckols said. “I’m the one who gets the phone calls at 10 o’clock at night or gets the nasty emails.”
Field hockey officials were hit hard by the COVID-19 pandemic. There was attrition, Nuckols said, and he saw a shift in sportsmanship after the pandemic, in what he hears from players on the field and spectators in the stands.
“When I first started doing field hockey, the parents never said a word,” Nuckols said. “Now, they think they’re experts.”
He said too that younger kids are working all day or at school and don’t want to spend another four hours on the field after that to referee.
“I can understand that,” Nuckols said. “I’m retired now, and do I really want to work every night? No, because usually by Friday I’m tired.”
Nuckols said he has about 30 total officials. So on a day-to-day basis, he’s figuring out how to cover all the games. He said most schools want to play on Mondays and Wednesdays but with his staff, that isn’t always possible.
There have been high school games postponed this year due to there not being enough officials. Since the beginning of the year, he’s lost six officials for various reasons, including injuries.
“Everybody can’t play on Monday, Wednesday,” Nuckols said. “It’s probably been happening the last 10 years, we’ve seen the numbers drop off.”
So, what do you do to fix the shortage and grow the number of officials?
With the number the association has right now, Nuckols said he’s at games almost every night during the week, sometimes on weekends and sometimes at multiple sites in the same night.
Field hockey is a technical sport, but Nuckols is open to anyone who wants to come out and try to officiate. He said especially if someone played the game before, they would make great officials. With headset communication now available to referees, it makes it easier to train and walk newer officials through the rules and the process.
“If you want to come out and officiate for us, I will hire you,” Nuckols said. “The pay is not bad, if you do JV, varsity max it’s $185 now for both games.”
An issue he runs into is that younger officials don’t want to listen to spectators yelling at them the entire game. But he tries to remind his officials that spectators don’t run the game and to try and brush it off.
That’s something that can’t be controlled — how the spectators will act. So when he’s training and recruiting, it’s about focusing on the things that can be controlled.
“I explain to them ‘You’re an official, comes with the territory,” Nuckols said. “Don’t let the coaches yell. (If a) coach goes and yells at you, stop. Give them a card. They’ll be quiet.”
Nuckols is hopeful for the future of officiating but also doesn’t quite know what the future looks like. In his term as commissioner, he’s worked on recruiting, and he’s pushed for his officials to get as much money as they can.
But with the growth of field hockey in the area, Nuckols said officials need to grow with it.
“The sport has gotten so big in this area,” Nuckols said. “I don’t know what the answer is.”