Scheduling referees in sports league is a daunting task at the best of times, particularly if a league’s scheduling system barely survived the 20th Century.
That’s an issue Calgarian Jonah Duckworth, founder of Ref Buddy, aimed to fix after 15 years working as a referee in the British Columbia Hockey League and across Western Canada.
“There was the same pain point every single season,” he said.
“The scheduling service that leagues use to assign refs to their games.”
Duckworth, a software developer by trade, couldn’t find a job out of school as a junior developer, so he was determined to build his own thing. He gathered data and began to visualize how he could build an app to make referee lives easier.
He worked with the BC hockey league through his development and started testing it with their league to start this season.
Duckworth said in most leagues there’s someone dedicated to assigning referees to different games – whether that’s at the junior hockey level or in minor hockey. On the officials’ side, users can input when they’re available.
“Then the assignor is able to easily see when (refs are) available on what days and then drop and drag and drop into games,” he said.
“It relieves time and headaches for the assignor because they’re assigning the right people to the right games, and it’s all live time availability updates.”
Duckworth said one of the biggest frustrations with being a referee was the scheduling. Given that virtually all referees have smartphones, putting availability into an app seemed like a no-brainer.
“Over time, it feels like technology should be updated, and the phones that we have in our pockets, we should be able to utilize this amazing technology,” he said.
“Every season, nothing, nothing, nothing. So, I thought the only person that’s going to build a better scheduling service for refs is a ref. That’s exactly what I did.”
Simple dashboard system
When league officiant has to schedule, they would just pull up that day, that week, that month and it shows a list of the referees on a calendar with all the games. Green dots show a referee’s availability, red means they’re a no-go, and yellow means they’re a solid maybe.
“It’s very simple. Very powerful,” Duckworth said.
Now, he just needed a little bit of a push to expand even further.
Duckworth said working in the Alberta Catalyzer – Velocity program has helped him put more business skills behind his programming.
“I’m a dev. I know code, I know how to build with code,” he said.
“I don’t know how to market. I don’t know how to do sales. I don’t know who to talk to.”
He started in the Alberta Digital Traction Program to learn the basics of setting things up. That’s how he landed his first client in the BCHL. Jumping into the Velocity program has helped him start to scale. Now, he’s working with BC minor soccer in Langley, BC.
He’s run into some organizations who tell him they already have a scheduling service. That’s been an uphill battle. Duckworth’s certain that through word of mouth and working with more leagues it’s only a matter of time he’ll drive more clients.
That’s the goal. But, he also wants to provide more features inside the system – training, supervision, feedback on games refereed and more.
“Ultimately, I want Ref Buddy to be the standard of assigning services in the whole sports world,” he said.
