Group Membership Saves Association

Mike Gervasi, president of the 140-member Staten Island Soccer Referees Association, had a problem.

His group had been approached by a local Catholic high school soccer league to officiate games. No problem there — Gervasi knew he had at least 35 referees qualified to officiate games at that level.

The problem came just a few days before the first games were scheduled. Due to a miscommunication, it had been understood that refs working the Catholic high school games would be covered under their existing USSF liability insurance.

Gervasi discovered that wouldn’t be the case.

“We didn’t feel comfortable putting our referees out there without any insurance,” he explained. “We tried getting them covered under the league’s insurance and under the schools’ insurance, but couldn’t.”

That’s when Gervasi put a call into NASO.

“We literally got things in place within a day,” he said. “We went back to our referees and told them about the NASO option and within a day NASO had us insured to work those games.”

Gervasi and his referees took advantage of NASO’s deep group discounts. Because they signed up with 25 or more members, they received their NASO memberships for the low price of $73 per official.

“I did the research,” said Gervasi, who is a lawyer who works in civil and commercial litigation, including insurance cases. “NASO’s coverage is very comprehensive and is clearly designed to fill any gaps other insurances might miss. The pricing was very fair and the fact that we got such quality insurance on such a short notice really saved us.

“Actually, what I think may be the best thing about the whole situation is that for that discounted rate, we still also got subscriptions to Referee magazine, too!”