MIAA Names New Softball Umpire Supervisor
The MIAA has a new man in charge of softball officials.
The league announced Wednesday the hiring of Austin Mezzacasa to the position of softball supervisor of umpires.
Mezzacasa is an NCAA softball official with over a decade of officiating and coordinating experience. In November of 2020 he was named Coordinator of Umpire Culture, Recruiting, Development and Retention at Perfect Game Midwest. He is also Perfect Game Midwest’s coordinator of national softball officiating, managing over 300 officials of various experience to officiate more than 100 softball tournaments of a national softball program.
Mezzacasa also constructed the most recent updates to the Perfect Game Softball Rulebook and has developed a new era training platform which serves as a consist recourse for training and developing softball officials.
Mezzacasa became a NCAA Softball Official in 2018. Prior to his NCAA softball officiating experience, Mezzacasa had experience officiating the USA Elite Select World Fastpitch Championship for seven consecutive years and umpired the USSSA National Championship games in 2017 and 2018.
Mezzacasa has also served as the Missouri State Umpire in Chief for the United States Specialty Sports Association (USSSA). During his time with the USSSA, Mezzacasa implemented new development programming technology which helped modernize training, making it easier and more convenient for officials to access. Mezzacasa also reprioritized the USSSA’s umpire recruitment model and created a conformed evaluation model to evaluate officials on field performance consistently across the state of Missouri.
Prior to his work with the USSSA, Mezzacasa spent two years as the Director of Officials for Belton, Grandview and Raymore Parks and Recreation.
Mezzacasa received both his bachelor’s degree in business management and master’s degree in business administration from Northwest Missouri.