Dave Kahm was merely looking for a rec league to join.

The Olean native, in 1995, had just returned home from his time in the Air Force and was hoping to play in one of the local programs, the Industrial Softball League at Marcus Park, for instance, or the East View League where his father played.

There was just one problem: You needed to be employed to play for those company teams at the time, and Kahm had no job. His father, a referee, offered up a different idea to fill the time.

“‘You should become an official,’” Kahm remembers his father saying.

“My exact words were, ‘why would I want to do that? They know nothing about basketball.’ That’s exactly what I said. Now, here I am, 25, 26 years later in my officiating career and I absolutely love it.”

Kahm has served on the Cattaraugus County Basketball Officials (CCBO) board for two-and-a-half decades. He’s been a collegiate official for the last 20 years. And for him, it’s just that … a labor of love.

It’s a way to stay connected to a sport he enjoys and to remain active. More than that, it’s its own form of competition. Kahm, after all, has officiated the New York State girls’ tournament, the Federation event and a number of collegiate playoff games. And they don’t allow just anyone to do those.

He’s also made numerous friendships along the way.

“You want to go out there and you want to work the perfect game,” he noted. “Just like when you shoot a basket, you want to make every shot. You want to go out there and play your best game every night, and that’s kind of the way it is with officials. We want to go out there and we’re competitive …

“And the camaraderie of it is second to none.”

NOW, however, Kahm is in the minority.

These days, there’s an officiating shortage in just about every high school sport across the country. The CCBO has been hit particularly hard (due to a number of factors, including a declining population and its thankless nature), reaching such a critically low number of referees that it could soon start to affect game scheduling.

Kahm and the Cattaraugus County board, which has dwindled to about 40-45 members, have continued to do their part to keep local hoops intact, doubling and sometimes even tripling up in this compacted 2021 season on game nights.

But the situation has become dire, they’ve acknowledged.

“It’s becoming very, very critical in all sports, at all levels for the number of officials,” Kahm explained. “People are retiring. We’ve had some officials that have maybe another five years left that have said, ‘you know what, I don’t want to do it anymore.’ Because of this pandemic, too, we had a number of people opt out, and who knows if they’re going to come back next year?”

He then put it thusly, “The average age on our board is well above 40, maybe even well above 50, which is not good for the sport, in our opinion. We’re looking for younger people, definitely, to kind of (take up the mantle).”

TO THAT end, the CCBO has started a bit of a recruitment campaign. Its goal: to attract even one new official in the coming days and perhaps have even a handful of interested people by the time (and if) the local summer league rolls around.

“That’s kind of the goal this year,” said Kahm, now the Girls Rules Interpreter for Cattaraugus County, “to kind of talk to those who are interested and possibly, if we can, use them during the summer league, to see if it’s something they want to be involved in. We’re going to do a Q and A if we get some candidates before (that) to go over any concerns or issues that they may have about officiating.”

There are, of course, the obvious drawbacks to being an official. It’s not easy being the subject of a crowd’s ire. Plus, Kahm added, referees take missed calls just as hard, if not harder, after the fact as a team or its fans.

But, he insisted, the positives outweigh the negatives.

“It kind of makes the winter go by a little faster, at least in my mind,” Kahm said. “To me, it’s sort of a little hobby. But it’s a decent little paying hobby, kind of like a part-time gig. You can work as many nights as you want — you want to work one night in a week, that’s great; there’s some flexibility there. And there’s really a sense of accomplishment (that comes with doing the job well).”

THE HOPE is also to attract candidates whose job situation may have changed due to the COVID-19 pandemic, where now, perhaps, their schedule and hours aren’t as much of an obstacle as they might have been before.

“People who may have wanted to officiate, but their work schedule wouldn’t allow them, they couldn’t get out of work on time,” Kahm said, “well, possibly now some of those people are working remotely from home where they have more flexible hours, so they might be able to come out and do some game nights.”

And though the money “isn’t the greatest,” Kahm admitted, it’s still enough to be considered a true supplemental source of income.

“I leave for a game in Gowanda,” he pointed out, “I’ve got to be there 45 minutes beforehand, and with the drive, that’s two hours. I’m at the game for an hour-and-a-half, then the drive home. Now I’m about four hours into a game at Gowanda, and that’s the farthest I’ll go. When I get done doing that game, that’s $20 per hour, maybe a little more.”

The Cattaraugus County Basketball Officials, and those chapters in neighboring Big 30 counties, no doubt, are in need of some new blood to ensure that high school games can be played in the same fashion they are now.

Those interested in joining that next wave are asked to email Kahm at davekahm@gmail.com.

(J.P. Butler, Bradford Publishing Company group sports editor, can be reached at jbutler@oleantimesherald.com)