THE FRONT ROW WITH JASON ELLIOTT: Wednesday, July 15, 2015

Good help is hard to find.

Outstanding umpires on the other hand, well, those seem to be growing like trees in Kootenai County these days.

THIS SUMMER, the area will be represented by two umpires - Frank Garcia and Brian Rounds - during regional baseball competitions in the West.

Garcia will umpire during the Little League baseball (age 11-12) Northwest regional tournament Aug. 9-15 in San Bernardino, Calif., with the winner advancing to the Little League World Series in Williamsport, Pa., Aug. 20-30.

Rounds, 50, will umpire at the Big League baseball (ages 15-18) West Regional tournament July 20-25 in Bremerton, Wash.

"It's the oldest age group that Little League governs," Rounds said. "They've got a World Series also. Any level of Little League that has a regional can advance to a World Series."

Teams coming to Bremerton are from Arizona, Hawaii, Northern California, Southern California and two from Washington, including the host Bremerton team.

The World Series is July 28 to Aug. 4 in Easley, S.C.

Rounds represented the area in San Bernardino in 2010.

"You can apply for other regionals at other levels," Rounds said. "I've applied to the Big League regionals three times, and finally was selected. You can only do it once. After doing regionals in 2010, doing that qualified me to go to Williamsport. It takes 8 to 10 years before your name comes up for a World Series, and now if I wanted to pursue a Big League World Series, it would take me 8 to 10 years from now."

Rounds works as a brand manager at Itron, which designs, manufactures, markets, installs and services systems and communication networks for electronic meter reading.

"I manage our brand and graphic standards," Rounds said. "I focus on the multimedia aspects of the business and it's a lot of fun and a good company to work with. They're very understanding with my time."

Rounds also umpires at the high school and Legion baseball level.

"I still do a lot of little field games," Rounds said. "There's quite a few differences between the little and big field. With Little League, you can't lead off and big field is true baseball. You can lead off and it's big kids, and big ball and the kids can hit. I enjoy both of them as much, and doing both fields are a lot of fun."

Rounds has lived in the area for 16 years and umpired for 15 of them.

"I've been involved with Little League almost from the point when I got here," Rounds said. "It's a lot of fun to help grow the game."

ROUNDS AND fellow District 1 umpire Torben Begines, 59, traveled to Calgary, Alberta, to serve as instructors for the Western Region earlier this year.

"It's something that (Northwest Umpire in Chief) Mark Bernstein organizes each year," Rounds said. "They have a week-long clinic in San Bernardino and they do a lot of outreach clinics and they were organized in Calgary. He tries to get instructors and he contacted us to go up for a long weekend. We had 65 kids from the age of 12 to 18 that we instructed about the game, taught the rules and how we go about things. It was a long weekend, but it was a good time."

Both made the trip to help pass on their knowledge in the hopes of finding other umpires.

"We're not getting any younger and you've got to keep bringing up guys and pass on the knowledge so that they keep volunteering to do this," Rounds said. "There's lot of those guys with the knowledge and love to do this. But volunteers, they're hard to find."

In most areas, like around here, Little League umpires are unpaid, while umps who work high school, Legion and travel baseball games are paid.

"With Little League, it's all volunteer," Rounds said. "And I love that. There's some areas that pay umpires, but that's something that we in this area don't believe in, and that's a good thing.

"These guys deserve the recognition for the countless hours of volunteer work they do," said Begines, who umpired at the Little League World Series in 2012. "I'm really proud of them."

Jason Elliott is a sports writer for the Coeur d'Alene Press. He can be reached by telephone at (208) 664-8176, Ext. 2020 or via email at jelliott@cdapress.com. Follow him on Twitter @JEPressSports.