major League Baseball umpire Alfonso Márquez was driving April 21, 2005, to an early season game in Tampa, Fla., when he got the news. His close friend, 37-year-old NHL linesman Stéphane Provost, died in a motorcycle accident at about 3:30 a.m. in Weston, Fla. Earlier that night, Márquez, Provost and friends had gotten together at the Hard Rock Cafe after Márquez’s crew worked a game in Miami.

“We were very close,” Márquez said. “Not only did we wear the same number, 72, but we were both immigrants to the U.S., and Stéphane and I both loved motorcycles. We hit it off immediately. I even took his motorcycle for a ride that night. I thought the person who called me was kidding. It was a very hard day.”

Years after his friend’s death, Márquez keeps one of Provost’s NHL striped shirts in his equipment trunk and has hung the shirt in his umpiring locker at every stadium he worked. And in the center of his chest protector, there’s a 72 patch NHL officials wore to honor Provost.

Márquez says Provost’s death was one of a number of incidents over the intervening years that indicated to him he needed to make some significant changes in his life. At 28, in the last month of the 1999 MLB season, he had achieved his goal of making it to the major leagues. He was hired full time a few months later, and he was a highly regarded umpire.
But problems off the field were looming. Fellow crew members and friends had told him on more than one occasion that he was drinking too much. They feared he might get a DUI and lose his MLB job or end up in other trouble.

“This was definitely another piece in the puzzle. It made me reflect a bit. It was part of it,” he said. “I was a ‘I would have a drink every day’ type of guy.”

But it would be another four years before Márquez made the decision to stop drinking once and for all.

“I’ve known Fonzy for 30 years,” recently retired MLB umpire and crew chief Ted Barrett said. “It’s been a long relationship. He’s my best friend.

We do a lot of things together.

“It got to a point where I kept thinking he would hit rock bottom. He never did. He just kind of kept going. And, you know, I feared for a couple of things. No. 1, that he loses his job. Or he’d turn up, you know, dead or in jail somewhere after a night of drinking.”

Barrett, an ordained minister who retired from MLB after 28 years on the field to pursue his calling as a minister, gave Márquez an ultimatum, telling him the friendship was over unless he stopped drinking.

“I finally got to the point where I had enough,” Barrett said. “And he’s not listening. He’s not going to listen. And he’s going to end up in a bad spot.

“But it was because of his wife, Staci. She never gave up on him.”

Eventually, Márquez saw the light and knew he needed to make some changes. But it didn’t come easily.

“I’m stubborn, hard-headed, and set in my ways,” he said. “I wasn’t ready to admit a lot of things. We always feel these things aren’t going to happen to you, and I was lucky enough to be able to say, enough is enough. I need to stop.”

Márquez says his decision to give up alcohol also came with a spiritual awakening that has brought him to a contentment he had never felt before and recognition things needed to change.

“I started thinking about the sacrifices my family made to come to this country, the amount of time, effort and sacrifice it took for me to get to the big leagues, and all the blessings that came with that — my wife and three children were all going to be put in jeopardy,” he said.

“It would have been very stupid of me to put all of that in jeopardy by continuing to keep drinking. It was actually controlling my life. So I just had to step away and quit drinking.”

Coming to America
Of all the MLB and Triple-A umpires currently working, Márquez may have had the most difficult road to achieving the highest level in his chosen field.

He was born into poverty in 1972 in the tiny pueblo of La Encarnación in the Mexican state of Zacatecas.

At age 7, his father, Antonio Márquez, made the decision to seek a better life in the U.S. and moved to California, leaving the family behind for a year and promising to bring his wife, Hermelinda Márquez, 8-year-old daughter Cecilia, and Alfonso to the U.S. as soon as possible. Alfonso also has an older sister, Aurora, who remained in Mexico and lives in Guadalajara.

Another sister, Hermelinda, named after his mother, was born in the U.S. after the family settled here.

“He worked for a year to save some money and pay for us to come up here,” Márquez said, recounting the story of how he arrived in the U.S. “We got on a bus and rode it for two days to Tijuana.”

He recalls the family spent the night in a “nasty hotel” before continuing the journey with the help of a “coyote,” who was paid to smuggle the three across the border into Southern California.

“We just started moving toward it and hiding,” he said, recalling the events of that extraordinary day. “Every so often, the Border Patrol would cruise by and kind of shine the light and spotlight, and we would just hide. Then I got to the point where I guess my sister and I got a little tired. So he came and picked us up one under each arm, and away we went.

“I remember coming up to a huge chain-link wall or a fence, and there was a hole. We were put through that hole, and we were trying to walk in the dark. I do remember being scared, not knowing where I was, and I just knew that we were going to go see Dad.”
But they still had a long way to go once they got to the U.S.

“We got to this house, and it got dark. And I just remember the coyote saying, ‘Just crawl on the floor and find an open spot. And tomorrow morning, we’ll go the rest of the way,’” Márquez said, emphasizing every detail of that trip. “We slept on the floor in the house, woke up the next morning and there were a bunch of people in that house.”

A few days later, the family was reunited in El Monte, Calif., east of Los Angeles.

“We hadn’t seen him for a year, and I just remember we were dropped off there, and my dad was there, and life began in the United States. This was back in 1978,” he said. “I wasn’t even 8 years old.”

The family relocated to Fullerton, where his dad was a gardener and his mother worked as a seamstress. Márquez didn’t speak English, but he was anxious to learn, and the school was bilingual.

Márquez says he was a good student and he learned a valuable lesson about integrity when he got caught cheating while in a class at Nicolas Junior High School.

“There was this teacher, Mr. Jim Schlotthauer, a history teacher I really liked. He was awesome, but I got caught cheating on one of his tests,” Márquez said. “He threw me out of his class. But I wanted to stay, and he made me carry a card stating I was doing good and attending classes. Every teacher had to sign it, and I became a straight-A student and went to high school, taking honors classes.”

A few years ago, the 40-year veteran teacher and Márquez reunited when Schlotthauer, who was still at the school, invited Márquez to speak at his old junior high.

“We’re very proud of Alfonso,” Juan Fonseca, Fullerton School District’s community liaison, said. “After he was done speaking to the class, he stuck around and talked one-on-one to the students, signed autographs and was very friendly.”

A Fire Ignited
In both junior high and later at Fullerton High School, Márquez was a member of both the basketball and baseball teams. And it was there he first became interested in officiating because of a play during a summer league game when he was 12.

“I hit an inside-the-park home run but I missed second base,” he said, recounting that moment. “They appealed to the base umpire. Ken Avey was his name. He’s since passed. They appealed, and he called me out.”

Rather than argue the call, Márquez made a point after the game to find Avey and politely get an explanation of the rule.

“He was in the parking lot afterward, and I started asking questions about how he saw the call, what he was looking for, the rule and about umpiring,” Márquez said. “I was interested, and I thought if I do that in the summer, I can make a little money.”
Márquez was hooked.

His mentor, Avey, encouraged him and helped get him started with the local association.
“I started with the little guys, the tee-ballers, and then onto Fullerton Pony League. The inside-the-park home run was on the first field I ever umpired a game on, Amerige Park,” Márquez said. “I knew once I finished high school, I knew umpiring was it. I enjoyed it a lot. I was trying to find ways to raise money to go to umpire school.”

Umpiring money and a loan from Larry Cawhorn, an older umpire with whom he became friends, gave Márquez just enough money for a round-trip plane ticket from California and tuition for the Joe Brinkman-Bruce Froemming Umpire School in Florida in the winter of 1993.

“Larry gave the money to get to the school,” Márquez said. “Between my uncle and Larry, I was able to get tuition, the flight and pay for the meal plan at school.”

Brinkman, now retired, said Márquez was a diamond in the rough on the backfields in Cocoa Beach, Fla., home of the umpire school Márquez attended.

“He was one of those guys who showed promise right in the beginning,” Brinkman said. “He had a knack for it. He got our interest, and he’s proved it as he’s one of the better umpires now in the big leagues.

“He really wanted it. He realized there was an opportunity, and he put that extra effort into it. He went the extra mile.”

But Márquez’s dream was nearly derailed at the beginning of the trip to Florida.
“Two days in the school, I almost went home,” he said. “I didn’t have any money, not an extra penny. And I went to the wrong field and the instructors started giving me a hard time, and I thought I should just go home.

“I met a guy, a classmate named Scott Nelson, and he said, ‘Let’s go to Denny’s and go eat and study the rules. I have a car and a credit card.’”

Nelson and Márquez would work some MLB games together in 2001, 2002 and 2003 when Nelson was a Triple-A call-up. Nelson would umpire 69 major league games before being released. The two remain friends.

Márquez finished strong enough at umpire school to be promoted to the Umpire Development Program’s extended camp and appeared to be on a fast track to being promoted.

He spent six-and-a-half years in the minors, working in the Arizona Fall League, Arizona Instructional League, Northwest League, Midwest League, California League, Southern League and Pacific Coast League before getting the call to the Show.

“I was lucky, blessed, it was basically one year at every level, and I kept getting promoted,” he said. “I got to Triple-A and then the fall league, and when I got to my first major league spring training, Marty Springstead, the American League supervisor of umpiring, said an umpire was ill and they needed me for games in Arizona.”

This was before MLB’s decision to merge the umpiring staffs from the two separate leagues into one, under the supervision of the Commissioner’s office.

“The next year, I got hired by the National League,” Márquez said. “The American League was interested, but when all that stuff went down in 1999, the National League hired me.”
That “stuff” refers to the ill-fated move by the umpires union to stage a mass resignation in order to force negotiations with MLB for a new labor agreement. In all, 57 umpires submitted their resignations during the season, and the leagues replaced 22 of them with Triple-A call-ups, some of whom are still on the field today.

Welcome to the Show
Márquez worked his first MLB game on Aug. 13, 1999, in the second game of a doubleheader between the Montreal Expos and Colorado Rockies.

“I was in Colorado Springs when they said we should go to Denver for my first big-league game, and my first game in the big leagues was behind the plate,” he said with pride.

He worked 30 games that season and joined the staff full time for the 2000 season.

Márquez has quickly cemented his reputation on the field as one of the game’s leaders, and he’s respected by his peers.

“In the final evaluations, I always told my instructors, ‘Is this student someone you’d want to go on the field with?’ Alfonso is that type of umpire,” Brinkman said.

Márquez and veteran crew chief Larry Vanover were together for four seasons, with Márquez serving as Vanover’s No. 2 man on the crew the final two seasons, a position that in most cases results in that umpire eventually leading his own crew.

“I like Alfonso as a person,” Vanover said. “I think he’s a really good umpire. He is as solid as they come, day in and day out.

“I didn’t know him, and we were kind of thrown together. The office was trying to match crews and they called and asked how about Alfonso Márquez as your No. 2. We were put together, and we had a great year. We got along off the field and we worked together very, very well. He knew what I was thinking and I knew what he was thinking. It was very positive and we stayed together for several years.”

In 2020, Márquez got the opportunity to lead his own crew. At 47, he left Vanover’s crew and was named a crew chief, becoming only the second Hispanic person to hold that honor, following longtime crew chief Rich Garcia.

In a wonderful marriage with his longtime wife, Staci, their children grown, and beginning his 24th MLB season, Márquez has amassed a significant resume that promises only to get better if he stays healthy and on the field for another decade.

At the end of the 2022 season, he had umpired 2,766 regular season games and 105 playoff or special event games, including four World Series (2006, 2011, 2015 and 2021), six League Championship Series (2003, 2008, 2013, 2016, 2017 and 2022), 11 Division Series (2001, 2002, 2005, 2006, 2011, 2012, 2015, 2018, 2019, 2020 and 2021), as well as the 2006 and 2018 All-Star Games.

By comparison, retired veteran umpire Gerry Davis worked 152 playoff or special event games. Joe West, baseball’s all-time total games leader, had 135 postseason or special event games.

Márquez has already been recognized by the Mexican Professional Baseball Hall of Fame in Monterrey, which has an exhibit to honor his MLB accomplishments.

Barrett says if Márquez does continue umpiring for another decade, he could put together a body of work that puts him among the all-time greats of the profession.

“Alfonso is a guy who deserves all the accolades that he gets and the ones he’s going to get,” he said. “I think one day we might all be sitting with him at Cooperstown when they enshrine him (in the Baseball Hall of Fame).”

Circle of Friends
Now an American citizen — he went through the citizenship process in late 2021 — Márquez still returns to his native Mexico on a regular basis. He sometimes takes along his MLB colleagues, including Barrett, to lead umpiring clinics and teach amateur and professional umpires on the finer points of the game.

“Fonzy represents not just Major League Baseball and his family but the whole country of Mexico and especially where he’s from down there in Zacatecas,” Barrett said.

Márquez remains very close to his extended family. Before COVID, before MLB umpire rooms were highly restricted after games, it was not unusual to see friends and family members meeting with Márquez and planning events with him, especially in Los Angeles or Phoenix, where he now lives full time.

Ironically, when he and Staci were looking to move into a neighborhood, they found a house near the Barrett family, and they’re now not only best of friends but live nearby.
“We do a lot of things together, and we ride motorcycles together. We’ve got a group of guys we ride with, and we do that together. So we see each other quite a bit,” Barrett said.

“We’re like a family, and now that I’m retired, and I’m not traveling as much seven months of the year, I think we may actually see each other more.”

Márquez also works with Barrett on Barrett’s Calling for Christ ministry. He also volunteers in the umpires’ nonprofit charity UMPS CARE, which provides numerous programs for organizations from youth-based charities to visiting VA hospitals.

Márquez’s friends said his marriage to Staci, his faith, his decision not to drink and his determination to always push himself harder have put him in this position of leadership.

“He’s really in the top tier of the profession now, in terms of what he is doing on the field, in terms of how he handles himself. He’s really in the top echelon of the profession,” Barrett said. “He’s at the top of the top.”

And for Márquez, the journey is not something he takes lightly. He understands things could have turned out much differently than where they are.

“I’m very fortunate. I don’t take what I have for granted, what this country has given me, Staci, my family and of course, my faith,” Márquez said.

Dan Ronan is a Washington, D.C. journalist who is the Managing Producer/Senior Reporter at Transport Topics and a news anchor on SiriusXM Radio and all-news WTOP-FM. He is a retired NCAA baseball umpire and a small-college and high school basketball referee. 

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While working for American Airlines at Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport in the 1980s, Smith crossed paths with NBA referee Darell Garretson. After assisting Garretson with travel through Chicago on a few occasions, Smith was exposed to basketball officiating at another level. On February 18, 1990, Smith was injured while playing basketball and decided his playing days were done. A 30-plus year journey in basketball officiating began.

Fast forward to March 30, 2021, and you land on the scariest day in the life of Smith and his family. After a morning COVID test and a light breakfast, Smith spent most of his morning completing some computer work and getting things in order for his evening assignment of top-seeded Gonzaga and No. 6 USC at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis. He enjoyed his normal light gameday lunch, an afternoon nap and some quality FaceTime with his family before leaving the hotel for the arena. From transportation to pregame rituals in the locker room, Smith describes the entire day leading up to game time as completely normal.

Then, about five minutes into the game, as Smith describes it, “I get to the lead, and I go ‘Man, I’m gassed. What is going on?’ It’s the last thing I remember.” Smith collapsed to the floor. After coming to and having discussions with trainers and doctors, Smith was taken off the floor on a stretcher and underwent extensive testing in the locker room. Immediate results did not show anything out of the ordinary. After regrouping at the hotel and multiple visits from fellow officiating colleagues, Smith set out for the hospital. Two hours and a battery of tests later, doctors had an answer for Smith’s collapse – a pulmonary embolism, more commonly known as blood clot in the lungs.

Smith concluded his Summit@Home video call with some incredibly inspiring words of wisdom for Sports Officiating Summit attendees and the entire sports officiating community: “You have to value each day, because none of us is guaranteed tomorrow. ‘Did I tell the people that mean a lot to me that I love them? If you didn’t, you should. Do I appreciate the fact that I was assigned this game today? If you don’t, you should. Do I appreciate the relationships that I have from being an official? If you don’t, you should. Do I reach out to people that I don’t even know, but are willing to extend kindness to me? If you don’t, you should.’”

The post Referee Voices: Bert Smith appeared first on Referee.com.

Wait. What?

It’s true. They won’t set you apart. Because all officials should be studying the rules, getting in the right position to make the calls and making the right calls most of the time. Those skills are what bond most officials and make them the same.

To set yourself apart from other good officials you must have something else, something special. You need that It Factor. “It” is what assigners, supervisors and other officials are looking for from you.

At a recent NASO summit, four individuals who have proved they have “IT” in spades came together and tried to figure out just what “IT” is. Fox Sports analyst Mike Pereira, who previously directed the NFL officiating department and is a former NFL official, led a discussion on officiating with former MLB umpire Mike Reilly, NFL referee Gene Steratore and NBA referee Joe Crawford (now retired). On and off the field and court, those officiating icons combine for more than 100 years officiating experience.

A number of It Factors emerged from those professionals. Ask yourself if you have what it takes to reach the next level in your officiating or consistently maintain a high performance at the level you’re at.

Passion

Do you have a passion for officiating or is it just another means to a paycheck? Money is important, but passion pays off. It counts. If you’re hooked on officiating, your attitude on and off the field and court with your fellow officials shows that. You want to go to those weekly association meetings (even the long-winded ones). It never enters your mind not to stick around after the game to discuss things with your partners, because you want to get better.

For many officials, it starts with a passion for the game and develops into a passion for officiating. But for some, that passion for officiating was passed down right away.

“I got hooked on it because my dad was an official,” Pereira said. “So I started at a very young age trying to understand officiating. I learned the game through the eyes of an official.”

Crawford credits his dad, the late MLB umpire Shag Crawford, for helping him develop his passion for officiating as well.

“I was just a fortunate person,” Crawford said, “and I owe everything to that guy because it is what formed me as a referee — that passion, that love that he had for his profession.”

That makes sense to Reilly. Even though he didn’t grow up in an officiating family, he developed a passion for baseball as a player.

“My father was in business, but I have five brothers and we grew up with the love of baseball and the game itself,” Reilly said. “And once I got started and realized that I wasn’t going any further as a player, that desire to be the best official — the best umpire I could be — developed.”

That passion can carry you in officiating. You will be able to see that passion in your partners and it will grow in you as well. It’s not about getting to the highest level, according to Steratore, but rather soaking up the experience at any level.

“You learn how to officiate this game in a car in February driving on an icy road in basketball with a man who probably has been doing Division II or III basketball for 35 years because he loves it, not because he’s on TV,” Steratore said. “Not because he’s making a bunch of scratch or he’s got a nice 401K — he loves the game. He knows how to manage people.

“You’re a young kid in his car and you don’t even know who you are yet let alone interfacing with, when you progress to the college level, someone who is doing this for a living. So now you’re back to the purity of officiating and the purity of the passions. …

“Officiating in its purest sense is in that car while you pick his brain about the interface you had with that D-III coach in front of 100 people four hours away from your house. And what he said to you, how you responded back because you were young and stupid and weren’t polished enough — and he taught you about yourself indirectly. If you were really smart and paying attention, you were learning about yourself, which was a life-learning experience.”

Competition Instinct

A passion for officiating equals a passion for competition. A competitive instinct counts. It shows you want to improve. You want to be better than the veteran official working next to you. You watch the next level because you want to be good enough to reach that next level. You’re disappointed that you didn’t get that state assignment, but instead of moping, you use that “rejection” for motivation to work on your game.

“I loved the game and I love to compete,” Reilly said about baseball. “And I think as an umpire we go out every day and compete against the game to be the best. And when I say, ‘Compete against the game,’ you go out there to be perfect. And we all know as referees and umpires that’s impossible. But that’s our goal when we start that particular game — to be perfect.”

Crawford agrees.

“I want to work with those two people out there and we want to be perfect,” he said. “At the highest level we want to get this thing done, and we want to do it right.”

When you don’t do as well as you set out to do, you don’t let that bring you down. It happens to the best of the best. The key is to not let it knock you out for good. You need to get up and fight to prevent future mistakes.

“It can be consuming. It can eat you up,” Crawford said, “because this year I had a couple hiccups in a couple of the games, and you really start to question yourself a little bit, especially when you hit the old 62, and you start to say, ‘I don’t know. Joey may have a little problem here.’

“But you’ve got to fight it. You’ve just got to keep battling it, and you hope the powers that be have the confidence in you to keep putting you back there.”

Command

There are some officials who make you wonder if they will be able to handle a big game, and then there are other officials at various levels that you know will handle the game. Assigners want them on that big rivalry or championship game. Fellow officials want to work with them. Having that command counts.

“In the NFL, you’re watching a quarterback that just went through a real quick bang, bang hit,” Steratore said. “You’re not sure if it was a foul or not, it’s close as heck, and now all of a sudden there’s three whistles from 40 yards away and someone’s running to you with a foul, but you have no idea of what it was. Convey that confidence, do it the right way and annunciate it correctly.” 

Show you’re in control, and people will believe you’re in control.

“I watch referees. That’s what I do,” Crawford said. “… I don’t know anything about the NFL. I grew up in baseball, but I don’t know anything about umpiring Major League Baseball. But I’ve watched (Steratore and Reilly). They have command. That’s what they have.

“(Steratore’s) command as a referee, (Reilly’s) command behind the plate is what sold these two guys. It’s what sold (retired NBA referee) Steve Javie. The command on the court or the field — how they’re being respected. Now if you call that ‘It,’ I don’t know. But all I know is that they got it because I’ve watched them.”

If you have command, you’re a decision-maker. You don’t wait and let your crewmembers bail you out on a close play. You step up and make the call every time.

“I used to tell officials, ‘You know what? When you’re going to throw (the flag), throw,’” Pereira said. “’Make the decision — if you’re right, (or) you’re wrong. If you’re wrong, who cares? You’ll learn. But when you do something on the field, be definitive.’”

If you are definitive, Pereira said, observers will recognize and appreciate that.

“You can teach him what you want called for holding,” Pereira explained. “You can teach him what you want let go — you can teach him that. But some stuff comes naturally — that instinct, that deportment, that comportment, that physical nature of being when you’re looking at somebody.”

People Skills

How do you interact with players, coaches and your fellow officials? Your personality counts. Crawford said that he learned that concept later in his career, but he believes that being a people person is important in officiating.

“What you really got to do in my opinion is take a step back,” Crawford said. “And (the late) Darell Garretson (former NBA director of officiating) used to say to me, ‘Joey, you’ve got to get a little more of your off-court personality and put it on the court because you turn — you laugh for 22 hours, and then for two hours it’s like somebody put Satan in you.’ And I used to say to him, ‘I didn’t understand that.’”

Crawford gets it now.

“That’s what I’ve come to realize — that you have to be a people person to referee,” he said. “I didn’t say, ‘Nice guy.’ I said, ‘A people person.’ And I think that’s what I didn’t get early on because I was listening to my father who was from the ’50s and the ’60s, and they attacked all the time. That’s how they officiated; it was attack.

“And that isn’t the way of the world today. … If I could do anything from the start again, I think I’d be a little more of a people person.”

Situation Management

Along with being a people person, you need to be able to handle situations that arise. You need to rise above pressure situations and not let them consume you.

“You wonder why some of these guys don’t make it,” Reilly said, “and it’s because … they just didn’t get it. They were good at ball, strike, safe and out — they could do it. But when it came to gametime handling of situations, handling managers, handling the pressure of the game, they couldn’t do it.”

Crawford shared a story about an NBA summer league game in Orlando in which Detroit was playing. Rasheed Wallace, who often led the league in technical fouls as a player, is an assistant coach for Detroit. Tiffany Bird was one of the officials on the game. One of the other referees was an NBA referee. For their first four years in the league, NBA officials work in the summer league.

“There’s a timeout between the third and the fourth period, and I see Rasheed reeling her in,” Crawford said. “So I’m watching and I’m saying to myself, this is why we’re here. We’re going to find out whether this referee has it. So I’m watching her and I’m just sitting there going, ‘Whack him, whack him.’

“Finally Rasheed is being real nice and then, bang, he went right for the jugular. And she just put her hand right up in his face and said, ‘I’ve got enough of you.’ That lady bought me. She now became — this doesn’t have anything to do with a guy or a woman — a referee.”

Handling arguments and other situations is essential in all sports.

“In baseball, the art of arguing is a quality you have to have,” Reilly said. “So when I look for a young umpire that we’re looking for that It Factor — it’s how someone handles himself in a stressful situation in an argument. And it could be different circumstances, one where he’s 100 percent right, and the other one is 100 percent wrong, and he knows it in both cases. But how aggressive is this young umpire who’s trying to find himself?

“And it doesn’t have to be a major league umpire. It could be a high school umpire, it can be a college umpire. But how, when you get in those sh– houses, you know how to get yourself out of them. And when you’re right, you’re right, and when you’re wrong you’ve got to be right. And that’s how you’ve got to handle those things.”

Investment

Officials know the commitment it takes to officiate, but for the most part, no one else cares. And that’s OK. You know you matter to the game.

When the NFL officials returned to work last season following the games worked by replacement officials, Steratore was the referee for the first game back.

“When we went back to officiate it wasn’t about us going back or ‘Look at us,’” Steratore said. “It was about that suddenly just for a moment in time the world understood that officiating was an integral part of sporting events. No more recognition.

“Yeah, did I tip my cap. Did I tip it twice? Yes. … I got more calls driving from Washington, Pa., to Baltimore that day from NBA officials, a couple major league umpires, college basketball officials, every official from every sport called … because they felt something as an official.

“We felt appreciated, which you don’t really strive for but it overwhelms you when it occurs, because without us guys and ladies the game doesn’t happen.”

While most officials will not be elevated by such an ovation in their careers, knowing that you are important, that your fellow officials are important and that your industry is important counts. It sets you apart.

So, what is the It Factor? It’s passion, humility, confidence, integrity, presence, respect for game, command, flexibility, dedication, trustworthiness, instinct, situation management, communication, pride, investment, people skills and competition instinct.

Does that match your list? It is all of the above.

“Every one of those, each word, is what you have to do to be successful, if you think about it,” Crawford said. “Passion, desire, respect … those are the qualities you need as an official at any level.”

“It is all about how you handle yourself,” Pereira agreed. “From my standpoint … that’s what makes an official.”

You can count on it.

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From being introduced to the avocation by his father, who had an impressive career as an official. To picking up a whistle himself as a cash-strapped college student, and meeting his future wife in the process. To working his way up the ladder, supported by men who had officiated with and for his dad. To becoming one of the most respected officials in the NFL, while making time to help others pursue their own officiating ambitions.

It’s fair to say Cheffers wants those in his circle to embrace and enjoy officiating as much as he does.

“There’s too much pressure, too much work, not to have fun doing it,” he said. “It’s a lot more fun if you do a good job, so that’s kind of our goal, to do a good job and that allows us to have some fun.”

Cheffers’ journey began at the knee of his father, Jim, a high school teacher and coach. The elder Cheffers, who was required to stop coaching when he took an administrative post with the Los Angeles Unified School District, took up officiating. He worked his way up the ladder and spent 13 years in what was then the Pac-8 Conference.

“I got to go to his games,” Carl said. “I got to go to one of his Pac-8 games every year on an airplane and hang out with his buddies. So I was obviously brought up in sports and brought up in officiating.”

Cheffers was a high school athlete but realized he would have to find another role if he wanted to stay actively involved in sports. By that time, his father had reached the Pac-8’s mandatory retirement age of 55 and was now assigning officials.

When Carl enrolled at the University of California-Irvine he started competing in intramural sports. He also started officiating to make some spending money.

“When I walked in the door, they said, ‘Here is your assignment for the day,’” he said. “Primarily football, softball, basketball, (but) whatever they had going we pretty much did it as student officials.”

Cheffers thought it wise to befriend the young woman who doled out the daily assignments.

“I worked in the recreation department,” Nanette Cheffers said, “and scheduled the intramural sports. (Carl) probably did come in to ply me for a good schedule.”

Carl and Nannette have been married 35 years. “She’s still supervising my officiating career,” Carl said.

The couple have two grown children: daughter, Melissa, and son, Ben, who works football in the Big Sky Conference.

Halfway through college, Cheffers approached his father about working high school games in Los Angeles and got reacquainted with some of the same people he had met years before when he was attending his father’s games. “All those people that I grew up with are the ones that shepherded me along,” he said.

When Cheffers started working games, his father might appear, perhaps accompanied by one or more of his officiating friends.

“You just never knew who was going to show up on the sidelines at one of my very early games,” Cheffers said.

When he moved to Long Beach after graduating from UC Irvine, Cheffers joined a crew and found himself supported by a new group of mentors.

“My dad had helped a lot of guys with their careers,” he said, “whether counseling them, helping them and critiquing them on the field, being their assigner or whatever. He knew a lot of people. A lot of people admired and respected him. He had kind of paid it forward, so when I showed an interest in officiating, all these guys, when I ran across them, they all invested in me.”

Jim Cheffers became his son’s most steadfast supporter. “He never missed a game,” Cheffers said. “That was just time that he and I got to spend together every week.
“I can picture his image to this day with his Ford Cobra windbreaker, and a clipboard and a Thermos of coffee and a hat on. He never missed a game and the guys on our crew definitely got a few minutes of constructive feedback after every single game.”

Cheffers eventually added junior college and NCAA Division III games to his schedule. By that time, he was working three or four games each weekend, primarily as a referee.

In 1995, Cheffers moved into the major college ranks when he worked a half schedule in what was then the Pac-10 as a head linesman.

By that point, Cheffers was already on the NFL’s radar. He had been encouraged to apply to the league a couple of years earlier, with the understanding it would be some time before he was considered for selection.

In early 1999 he was contacted by NFL Supervisor of Officials Mike Pereira, who at the time was in charge of NFL Europe under Jerry Seeman, the NFL’s senior director of officiating, and asked to go to NFL Europe to work as a side judge. Cheffers accepted the offer but his first trip to Europe that spring was tinged with sadness. His father was losing his battle with cancer.

“The day of my flight to Barcelona (Spain) for my first NFL Europe game, my father was in the hospital and not doing well,” he said. “I called up my mom and sister and said, ‘Dad’s clearly not going to make it. Do you want me to stay here or should I go to Barcelona?’ And basically, my mom said, ‘If you don’t get on that plane to Barcelona, he will have some sort of miraculous recovery and will knock you into the middle of next week.’
“So off I went, knowing that was probably going to be the last time I saw my father alive,” Cheffers said. “Sure enough, when I got to Barcelona, there was a message waiting for me at the front desk that my father had passed away.”

Cheffers went on to work that season’s World Bowl, the World League’s championship game, before embarking on a collegiate season that saw him work a half schedule in the Pac-10 and a half schedule in the Western Athletic Conference (WAC). The WAC assignments proved to be extremely significant.

“Without those five games in the WAC, I would not have had a full Division I schedule,” Cheffers said, “and the NFL would not have considered me for being hired, not in (the 2000 season).

Cheffers worked NFL Europe again the following spring and was preparing for his upcoming college season when he got a call from Seeman, inviting him to join the staff.
“I couldn’t really answer his question at that time,” Cheffers said, “because I was too emotional. But I eventually said yes.”

Cheffers was assigned to Larry Nemmers’ crew. It marked the start of a friendship that continues to this day. “I was the luckiest guy in the world,” Cheffers said. “Larry is one of the best people on Earth and certainly gave me a lot of counseling and instruction and mentoring, and everything else.”

Cheffers made his regular-season NFL debut Sept. 3, 2000, at Arrowhead Stadium in Kansas City. Just before the opening kickoff, Nemmers gave his crewmate a moment to remember.

“We’re ready to go,” Cheffers said, “and I’m the side judge so I’m way up on the 45 yardline, on the sideline ready to go. Of course, I’m nervous, excited. It’s Kansas City. So it’s loud and full of energy, and everything else. And Larry comes running up all the way from the goalline. He comes 60 yards up the field right at me and I’m thinking, ‘Oh God, what did I do already?’

“So, he comes up and he says, ‘Look up in the sky.’ And I’m kind of thinking there’s a flyover or something I missed,” Cheffers said. “And I look up and he said, ‘Your dad is watching you.’ He takes off and runs back to the goalline. The emotion of the moment is overwhelming and I’m trying to get composed for the kickoff and everything else.
“It was just a great memory, a great way to start off my NFL career, and that’s just the kind of guy that Larry is to make sure that my dad was included in my first NFL game, my first play.”

Nemmers cites Cheffers’ professionalism and confidence from the moment he joined the crew. “You have to have that air about you as an official,” he said. “Not arrogance, but confidence.”

Cheffers spent eight years as the side judge on Nemmers’ crew. He also continued to work NFL Europe games for eight seasons, three as a side judge and five as a referee. For several years, he was also designated the alternate referee on Nemmers’ crew in the event of an emergency.

“That means he went to the coaches before the game,” Nemmers said. “Carl would always be with me. We’d walk around the field together.”

When Nemmers retired before the 2008 season, Cheffers took over as the referee on the crew. “When he stepped in, he was ready to go,” Nemmers said.

Jerry Markbreit was the NFL’s referee trainer at that time. He and Cheffers first met when the 11-year-old Cheffers attended the 1972 Rose Bowl his father worked alongside Markbreit, who was the referee. It was the only bowl game Markbreit ever worked.
“When he first came in (after being named to head Nemmers’ crew), I asked him, ‘Are you related to Jim Cheffers?’” Markbreit said. “He said, ‘That’s my dad.’ So we kind of connected right there.”

After working five playoff games as a side judge, Cheffers received his first postseason assignment as a referee following the 2009 season. He served as the alternate referee for Super Bowl XLIX before being named to work Super Bowl LI between New England and Atlanta in February 2017. He refereed his second Super Bowl to conclude last season, his 21st in the NFL.

Markbreit says Cheffers’ background made him a good fit for the referee’s role. “He’s just as solid as any guy I’ve ever worked with as far as being a referee,” he said. “He’s a manager in his business life. He’s very intelligent, works well with people and demands respect because he carries himself on and off the field the way you would expect somebody with dignity to act.”

Both of Cheffers’ parents were teachers. He believes growing up in that environment enhanced his own people-management skills.

“I didn’t go that direction from a professional standpoint,” he said, “but I am a teacher deep down inside and I think I can say humbly, people like being on my crew. They know I’m going to do everything I can to help them hit their full potential and I am fully invested in them. I will do anything I can to help them be successful and we are going to have very comprehensive, structured pregames every single week.”

Cheffers prides himself on his ability to mentor officials who are new to his crew and/or the NFL and help them adapt to professional football and their new responsibilities.
“I love to reach young officials,” he said, “and I hold them accountable for doing their part. Most people respect that because I’m putting in the time too. After 21 years, I have a little bit of a track record of success. That’s one of the things I’m most proud of and one of the things I continue to challenge myself on, ensuring that all of us get better and that’s including me; I’ve got to do my part.”

Throughout his career, at whatever level he was working, Cheffers has made sure to remember and credit those who came before him and took the time to encourage, mentor and critique him.

“I always say a prayer before every single game,” he said, “and I thank all the people who have invested in me. I use that term very intentionally because, just like anything else you invest in, whether it’s your home, a car, the stock market, a 401K plan or whatever you invest in, you expect a return.

“There’s a long list of people that invested in me, gave part of themselves to me. And without those people, I would not be here. So it’s incumbent upon me to show them a return on their investment. That’s really one of the things that drives me, ensuring they see a good return on the investment they have willingly made in me.”

As if to repay the kindness of others, Cheffers has retained membership in the Long Beach unit of the California Football Officials Association. He recalls a comment from Fred Gallagher, a longtime mentor and family friend, after Cheffers was hired by the Pac-10. “He didn’t say ‘Whoa,’ or anything like that,” Cheffers said. “He said, ‘Good job, kid. Now, who are you going to mentor to replace you?’

“That’s pretty much how I grew up. That culture I grew up in is reaching back and pulling up the next person. That’s my DNA. I’m super lucky that all those people decided that I was somebody they wanted to give their time and resources to.”
One of the people he encouraged was his own son, Ben, who is now a back judge in the Big Sky Conference, a position his father thought was perfect for him because, “I don’t know anything about being a back judge.”

Cheffers was determined not to push his son into officiating. “I could never live with myself doing that,” he said. But he delights in how his colleagues helped introduce Ben to the avocation.

“That to me is one of the most rewarding things I’ve ever seen and ever experienced in my officiating career,” he said, “watching my friends help my kid become an official. They did everything they could to give him the opportunity to be successful.”

For his part, Ben Cheffers is grateful to the men who have supported his officiating ambitions. “I’ve been so fortunate to have some really influential and knowledgeable people take an interest in my career and offer to help me along the way,” he said. “One of the best ways to learn is from experience and I’ve been so blessed to have a wealth of people with many years of experience pass on their expertise to me. My dad, of course, has taken a special interest in my officiating. He is a great resource to have when I run into new situations or rules questions.”

Ben Cheffers is impressed by how respected his father is as a man. “I have never had anyone ever come to me and speak negatively about my dad’s character or personality,” he said. “I could not tell you how many times someone has come up to me and said, ‘Hey, your dad told me (something) at a clinic five years ago and I still use it to this day.’
“I really believe that others are so willing to help me because my dad treats people this way and goes out of his way to help them.”

The 61-year-old Cheffers isn’t sure how much longer he wants to be on the field. His full-time job for a company that manufactures automobile batteries keeps him busy and he also occupies himself with other hobbies. He is active with the Boys and Girls Club and he and Nanette volunteer their time with the theater group at the high school their son and their daughter, a professional actress, attended.

Nanette Cheffers lauds her husband’s ability to juggle his responsibilities. “He is extremely disciplined and he’s extremely focused,” she said. “When he puts his mind to what he wants to do, he works at it until he accomplishes it.

“The other part of it is, he’s able to look at a situation and immediately access pretty accurately what the situation is and what it demands. That skill is obviously necessary on the field and it serves him well in his full-time job as well as his volunteer activities he’s involved in, and also serves him well for our family.”

Through it all, Cheffers remains passionate about officiating.

“I don’t have a complete long-term plan that, ‘This is going to be the drop-dead date when I retire,’” he said. “I don’t want to stay a year too long. I’m still thoroughly enjoying it. I still feel like I have a lot to give. Obviously, the league thinks I’m doing a pretty good job, so I am definitely planning to keep going for a few years yet. But that’s really a year-by-year thing. A lot changes at my age from year to year.”

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As the always dapper Clay Martin takes his seat on his team’s bench at the Frank Herald Fieldhouse in Jenks, Okla., what one sees isn’t necessarily what one gets. The 6-foot-4 coach of the mighty Jenks High School boys’ basketball team is a deeply spiritual man who speaks in strictly G-rated language, addressing everyone as “Sir” or “Ma’am.”

“That’s just the way I was raised,” he said.

But Martin can instantly transition into a fierce competitor. Darned right he’s going to get into the face of any player who isn’t cutting it for the Trojans. Martin will certainly speak up when he feels an official has missed a call. As Shannon Martin, his wife of 22 years, notes, “People are surprised because he’s so calm and peaceful outside of sports, but you get him on a basketball court or football field and he has such a determination and competitive spirit. He will stomp and he will get in your face.”

The Martin Method has clicked for nearly two decades at Jenks, the third-largest program in talent-rich Oklahoma, with the Trojans going 277-128 and advancing to the 2009 Division 6A championship game under Martin’s watch. Up to 2,000 fans a game usually file out of the fieldhouse with smiles on their faces after games and that starts with Martin.

But all of this doesn’t approach conveying what this man is all about.

As Martin walks into another NFL stadium on game days, his sharp duds are replaced by a striped official’s uniform and a white hat he wears with enormous pride. Martin didn’t pursue football officiating until 2005 — just two years after he took over Jenks’ basketball program — but his sharp mind and cool disposition enabled him to rocket through the ranks. By 2015, he had reached the NFL and, within three years, he was a referee at the age of 43. You’d better believe this — he’s a fighter. Less than a month after testing positive for COVID-19 last Dec. 19, Martin was at Arrowhead Stadium in Kansas City for an AFC Divisional game between the Chiefs and Browns. Incredibly, he had been hospitalized with double pneumonia (bacterial and COVID-19) just 13 days before that game.

But that still doesn’t approach relating what Martin is all about. Not even close.
For an express trip to the core of this remarkable man, let’s go to the seventh floor of St. Francis Hospital in Tulsa, Okla., in July 2014. McKenzie Martin, Clay’s then-14-year-old daughter, had developed sepsis after complications from an appendectomy and she was fighting for her life. As Martin recalls, “It was the toughest time of my life.” McKenzie was so weak she couldn’t even brush her teeth. Showers were prohibited because she was connected to medical equipment, making her feel grimy. The pungent smell of dirty laundry in nearby hampers hung in the air, darkening her disposition all the more. Even a welcome view of a local park below her room was obstructed by a broken window. But she never walked alone. Right by her side, literally step by step, was Martin. He practically lived at the hospital that month and was a pillar of strength for his devastated wife.
McKenzie recalls her father gently shaving her legs, just to help her feel clean. “Though it may seem insignificant, that act showed that my dad was willing do anything to ease my mind and establish as much normalcy as he could in such an abnormal time in our lives,” McKenzie said.

Martin would guide McKenzie down a corridor, gently challenging her to walk far enough to see a view of a children’s playground at the far end as she leaned on him for support. When McKenzie’s long nights were at their most unsettling, her father would slide into the left side of her bed and stroke her hair. McKenzie could hear him gently murmuring as she drifted into a welcome sleep.

“I could not quite make out what he was saying, but I could hear the muttering of his lips as he prayed over me,” McKenzie recalled. “That alone was enough to calm my nerves enough to secure at least a few hours of deep sleep.”

There you have the real Clay Martin. Without question, he has achieved a remarkable double as an official and a coach.

He is a born-again Christian who married his high school sweetheart and is a devoted father to their son and daughter despite the long hours his dual careers have demanded. The closest he has veered to uttering a four-letter word might have been when Ed Hochuli, his first NFL crew chief, once heard him defiantly ask, “What the heck?”
Even though he’s young enough to win countless more games at Jenks and possibly officiate some Super Bowls, the decency and genuine compassion this God-fearing man projects each day is what stands out most about him. Just ask a now healthy McKenzie, who keeps something from her hospital stay to this day that reminds her of the man her father is.

“One of my favorite lines that my dad delivered during that time was actually in a letter he had waiting for me before I got home,” McKenzie said. “In this specific letter, he closed his thoughts by stating that I am ‘as tough as nails.’ I likely would have brushed that comment off if it had come from someone else, but I cherished it coming from him. His perseverance is on another level. I have always wanted to be like my dad and I took his praise of my strength as a testament that I am on the path to do so.”

Anyone who converses with Martin for five minutes will likely remember him in the most favorable light. NFL officials who are about to walk into a stadium on game days tune into Martin when he clears his throat. Hochuli speaks from experience on that subject.

“Clay led our Sunday morning devotionals as a crew and he was a master at it,” Hochuli said. “It wasn’t by preaching the Bible, although Clay is a very religious Christian. His devotionals were not from the Bible, so to speak. They were stories and anecdotes that taught those same principles and he was extremely good at that. I was just immensely impressed by somebody who could take a fairly coarse group of people and get everybody on the same page and in that same mindset every Sunday morning like that before the game. It was a very cool experience.”

Martin was born to Gerry and Sharon Martin on April 29, 1975, in Pensacola, Fla., but only a quirk of fate allowed that to happen. Gerry had enlisted for the Vietnam War and served as helicopter pilot for the Marine Corps. During the first few months of 1970, a helicopter Gerry was originally supposed to pilot crashed into a mountain in Da Nang, killing everyone aboard.

“I remember him sharing with me that he was assigned a mission and the mission had changed the next day and he was taken off the mission because he was a higher-ranking officer,” Martin said. “The guy who ended up flying that mission didn’t come home and that’s pretty surreal.”

Once Gerry returned from Vietnam, he married Sharon and they raised three children who were born two years apart — daughter, Brooke, came first, followed by Clay and then Josh. All three children grew up in a middle-class home located at 9124 E. 38th Place in East Tulsa. The virtues that define Martin today were ingrained during a blissful childhood. Make that blissful with one caveat — Martin’s intense desire to succeed.

“Mom and Dad were in the PTA and we were very active in church on Wednesdays, Sunday mornings and Sunday nights,” Martin said. “Whether it was Easter egg hunts or playing, people will tell you I wanted to win. And if I didn’t, I’d probably throw a fit. We’d re-do the Easter egg hunt until I found more. We’d replay the game until I won. My childhood was filled with a lot of family moments because we were together so much — all five of us. The older we got, most of our family trips revolved around youth sports. My folks never missed anything that we did.”

While at Nathan Hale High School in Oklahoma, Martin developed into an all-state player in football and basketball and his will to win was overwhelming by that point. There were countless occasions when Josh was awakened in the dead of night in the bedroom he shared with Clay as his brother mumbled plays in his sleep. Shannon says Clay has been doing the same with her since they were married in 1998. “I’ve woken up many times because Clay is talking in his sleep,” she said.

Martin started out as a wide receiver at the University of Tulsa in 1993 before transferring to Oklahoma Baptist. There he could concentrate on his preferred sport of basketball and became a four-year starter under Bob Hoffman. Martin was an extension of Hoffman on the court and he started for the Bison as a sophomore when they advanced to the NAIA championship game, a 73-64 loss to Life University. In his career, Martin averaged 9.2 points, 7.4 assists, 5.2 rebounds and 2.2 steals and he was inducted into the university’s athletic hall of fame in 2011.

“He took scouting reports to another level,” said Hoffman, who was OBU’s head coach from 1990-99. “He understood the game, he understood how to get opponents out of their game and he was just tenacious in everything he did. He played point guard for us even though he was 6-foot-4. His ballhandling skills were good, but that wasn’t what made him a great point guard. He just knew where everybody was supposed to be and he knew what other teams were trying to run.

“We used to meet as coaches to decide all-conference and we were voting on Coach of the Year,” Hoffman said. “One of the coaches nominated Clay for Coach of the Year even though he was a player. That’s the kind of respect he had among other coaches, even back then.”

By 2004, Clay was married to Shannon and they were the parents of McKenzie and Chase. Clay served as an assistant coach at the University of Texas-Pan American from 1999-2001 before deciding with Shannon that high school coaching was his true calling.

“So I kind of worked my way backwards at a young age,” he said.

After one-year head coaching stops at Tecumseh and Muskogee high schools in Oklahoma, Martin took over Jenks’ program in 2003. Any young couple with two children needs extra money and, in 2004, Martin was working a summer job at the Southern Hills Country Club, which has been the site of several major golf tournaments over the years.

“Man, it was the toughest work I ever did,” Martin said. “I was on the grounds crew and you’re talking about preparing greens, cutting rough, you name it. It was just the hours and the sweat and the heat. That next summer, I said, ‘Man, I think I’m going to look for something else,’ and that’s what opened the door to officiating.”

Enter Charlie Myers, a retired principal at Jenks who drove school buses in his retirement just to stay involved. Myers was a longtime high school football and basketball official who was among those who pointed Martin in that direction. With Martin’s extensive experience as an athlete, wouldn’t officiating be a way to earn extra income?

“We spent a lot of time on the school bus going to and from basketball games,” Martin said. “In the course of conversation, he would say, ‘You really ought to think about this.’ He said, ‘I think you’d be a really good official,’ and he was a man I trusted. He had actually officiated me in high school sports. He had been doing high school officiating for a long time and I trusted him greatly. It was like E.F. Hutton. When Charlie Myers speaks, you listen. It was, ‘If Mr. Myers thinks I can do this, I might be good at some level.’”

A future NFL referee was born. Even as a first-year high school official at the age of 30 in 2005, Martin had a presence that serves him well to this day.

“We began officiating together on a crew with four guys that had only two to three years of experience,” former crewmate Barry Stearns said. “Our crew chief, Don Thomas, was a veteran official with 40-plus years of service and several state championship games. He was fairly high strung and always a little anxious about being on the field with younger officials. Clay was able to figure out a way to keep Don calm mainly with his unique communication skills and calm demeanor.”

What Martin singles out as perhaps the biggest break of his officiating career came in 2007 following an encounter with longtime NFL official Gerald Austin, who was coordinator of officials for Conference USA from 2001 until this February. Austin can take credit for being instrumental in Martin’s career.

“I’ve had people who have taken chances on me and seen things in me beyond what I could,” Martin said. “I go to Gerald Austin, who hired me in Conference USA after two years as a high school official, and he took a chance on me. I worked at a University of Tulsa scrimmage in the spring of 2007, as a lot of high school officials do, and after the scrimmage, he introduced himself to me and said, ‘Hey, I just want to know why you haven’t applied,’ and I said, ‘Sir, I’ve only been doing this for two years.’ He said, ‘Listen, I like what I saw and I’d like to see your application.’ And I said, ‘Yes sir.’”
Needless to say, Austin was correct in his assessment.

“He has a good feel for the game,” said Austin, who was an NFL official from 1982-2007. “I think that’s always the first quality for being an excellent official — that you have a feel for the game and you understand the application of the rules. You don’t give a speeding ticket at 58 miles an hour in a 55 mile an hour zone, but if it’s 68, then you give a speeding ticket. Clay lets the players play and the coaches coach, but when they go beyond the line, then he’ll make the call. And he’s also a basketball coach and a school administrator, so he has that leadership quality.”

While Martin was developing his resume as an official he was developing the Jenks basketball program into a state power. His first two teams at Jenks went 12-14 and 13-12. The Trojans improved to 22-5 in his third season and, by the 2008-09 season, they went 27-2 and advanced to the Division 6A championship game, which ended in a 72-48 loss to Putnam City. Jenks stayed on the winning path until 2015, when Martin stepped away from coaching after being hired by the NFL. After Jenks suffered through successive seasons of 12-10 and 3-20 without Martin on the bench, he was convinced to return in 2017. Success has since returned to the Trojans, but that should be no surprise since the man running the show literally talks basketball in his sleep. Just how consumed is Martin with the task at hand?

“During timeouts, I hand Clay the dry-erase board to draw things up for the players,” said longtime assistant coach Kalin Dahl. “I have an eraser attached to the board. Clay was so into the game that he erased with his hand what he had drawn on the board. At some point, he wiped his forehead with the same hand that he had erased the board and he left a long green streak on his forehead.

“The game was intense and none of us assistants said anything,” Dahl said. “After the game, he looked in the mirror in the locker room and asked how long he had the mark on his forehead. He said that in the future, please tell him he has marker on his face.”

Martin’s intensity is still secondary to his compassion.

“He definitely did a lot of things for a lot of kids,” said Christopher “Ike” Houston, who started on Jenks’ first three teams once Martin returned. “He’s a nice, but winning, guy. He wants to win every possession and he always tells us, ‘That’s in basketball or your personal life,’ because he kind of treats it the same way.”

“He’s very charismatic as a man, he’s very disciplined and he does stuff the right way,” said 2007 Jenks graduate Nicky Sidorakis. “He’s a good leader on and off the court and he’s tremendously fun to be around. He can joke. His sense of humor can be dry at times, but it’s a funny dry and it’s not an uncomfortable dry. He instills character traits. I could go on and on, but he’s just a good man all around.”

Would Martin ever lie? Absolutely not. But would he sidestep the whole truth to work an NFL playoff game? Well that’s a different story.

It was on Dec. 31, 2020, when Martin, terribly sick with COVID, was taken by ambulance to St. Francis Hospital, where McKenzie fought for her life in July 2014. At that point Shannon, suddenly sleeping in an empty bed, had serious doubts whether she would ever see her beloved husband again. Two weeks later, he was on national television, working that AFC playoff game in Kansas City.

“I’ll be honest,” Shannon said. “His doctor was not really optimistic that Clay would be able to ref a conference football game. I told his doctor, ‘He thinks he’s going to be able to ref,’ and his doctor said, ‘It’s going to be six months before he’s going to be able to run up and down the field.’

“Clay had been released and they obviously called and offered him a playoff game. He got home on a Monday (Jan. 4) and he had a follow-up with his doctor that Wednesday and he was planning to leave Saturday for the playoff game. His doctor went over his labs and said, ‘I think I’ll release you on Friday.’ And Clay said, ‘OK, if you’re going to release me to go back to work, I’m just going to need that in writing.’ He never told his doctor he was going to ref a playoff game. He hung up the phone and I said, ‘You are so sneaky. You never told him you were going to ref.’”

Just as Clay willed McKenzie back to health in 2014, he did the same with himself to officiate at the highest level. But doing anything at the highest level is all the man knows.

“Everyone has their chosen professions and Clay has excelled in both of the ones he’s chosen,” younger brother Josh said. “He’s passionate about his faith, he’s passionate about his family, he’s passionate about his players. He not only coaches these players, he gives them life lessons that help them grow up into young men. And then he’s passionate about football.

“He is not just a brother or a father. He’s the person he sees in everything he does. I don’t know one thing that he has put his mind to that he has not excelled in.”

The post Feats of Clay appeared first on Referee.com.

“I went the first five minutes of the game without putting air into the whistle,” O’Neill recalled about Arizona’s overtime win against Kentucky. “Nothing happened in front of me. I didn’t have a foul; I didn’t have a ball go out of bounds; I didn’t call a timeout. … I started to sweat a little bit. I said to myself, ‘I don’t care what happens … the next foul or violation I see, no matter where it’s at, I’m calling it.’”

Fortunately, O’Neill’s first call of that game was a foul in his primary area.
That national title contest concluded his 20th year as a Division I men’s basketball official. Now 24 years later, O’Neill has hung up his lanyard for the last time. For parts of six decades, he worked in more than 20 NCAA D-I conferences. By his count, he tallied more than 3,300 D-I games, which he believes is more games than any other official in NCAA men’s basketball history.

“I want that record,” said O’Neill, whose high profile came mainly through his work in the Big Ten, Big 12 and Southeastern conferences. “College basketball has seen a lot of very good officials, and the number of games we work is one way we are judged. I worked hard to become one of the best officials, so that record is important to me. It’s a distinctive mark of longevity doing something I love.”

Before his extensive foray into officiating, the native of Calumet Park, Ill., played baseball for Northern Illinois University. He graduated with a degree in physical education in 1967, began a teaching career in Chicago’s south suburbs and started calling grade school basketball games. At home, he and his wife, Vickie, were raising their three sons, Richard, Tom Jr. and Michael.

O’Neill resigned from teaching in 1979 to become the director of recreation for Calumet Park. He also took over as the boys’ basketball assigner for the South Inter-Conference Association (SICA), a conglomerate of nearly 30 high schools in Chicago’s south and southwest suburbs.

“I wanted to help improve officiating,” O’Neill said of the assigner’s job he held for 25 seasons. “I provided SICA with the best officials in the area. Some SICA games had Division I officials working. They weren’t big-time D-I referees at that time, but they were guys with significant college experience. I’d argue against anyone in Illinois who believed their conferences had better officiating than SICA.”

O’Neill’s first D-I game was at Eastern Illinois in 1977, and nine years later he made officiating his full-time occupation. He has worked as many as 112 games in a season, crisscrossing the country from New York to Florida to Minnesota to Texas to Colorado to California.

Building his frequent flyer miles from November through March gave him plum assignments, but it came at the typical expense of family time. While O’Neill monitored post play and airborne shooters, his wife managed their sons’ increasing load with school and extracurricular activities.

“Tom’s travel schedule was a lot,” Vickie, Tom’s bride of 52 years, said. “Having to get three boys back and forth by myself and be there with them was difficult because I couldn’t be in two or three places at once.”

O’Neill saw potential in 1989 to minimize his travel when he received a phone call from Dave Gavitt, then the commissioner of the Big East Conference. Gavitt had ties to the NBA and informed O’Neill the NBA wanted to add him to its officiating staff.

“Dave called at a time when I was ticked off about not getting the Final Four assignment,” O’Neill said. “I talked to Vickie about working in the NBA and had to convince her I would be home more. I was working 80-90 games a year, which meant being on the road 20 nights a month, but with the NBA, I would be gone 13 nights a month.”

O’Neill accepted the NBA’s offer for the 1989-90 season, but circumstances beyond his control negated the expected benefit of less time on the road. Before the preseason ended, the league instituted a new travel policy.

“The rule was for the officials to fly into the cities of their games on the first flight of the morning,” O’Neill said. “An official missed a preseason game because of travel issues, and Darell Garretson, the supervisor of officials, changed the rule and made it mandatory for us to fly to our cities the night before the games. That meant I would be gone 26 nights a month.”

O’Neill recalled Christmas 1989 when he “had to leave family dinner in order to catch a flight to the West Coast. Vickie said to me, ‘You know this is not working.’ At that moment, I knew I couldn’t stay in the NBA. I needed her support if I was going to officiate.”

“He promised more time at home, but it turned out to be the exact opposite,” Vickie said. “Sometimes he’d be gone a week at a time, and I didn’t like it.

“He chose to give up the NBA, and I commend him because getting there was one of his goals. He put his family first, and I appreciated that.”

When O’Neill decided to return to the college game, he could not wait until the NBA season ended to see if he could pick up where he left off.

“I began calling my former college supervisors in January,” he said, “and everyone took me back … except the Big Ten.”

Under Commissioner Wayne Duke, the Big Ten did not reinstate officials who left the conference to work in the NBA. When Jim Delaney succeeded Duke in 1990, he and Rich Falk, the Big Ten’s coordinator of men’s basketball officials, revised the policy and welcomed O’Neill back.

“NBA experience shouldn’t disqualify officials from returning to college,” said Falk, who held that position with the Big Ten for 21 years. “We had such high regard for Tom, and his experience combined with the respect he had from coaches, officials and other conference coordinators were big factors in bringing him back.

“Anytime you can get an official who’s worked at the highest levels, whether the top NCAA conferences or the NBA, you know he’s worked games involving the best players and a high quality of play. If they can manage those games and have good reports from the people with whom they worked, those are good indicators they can manage most any situation.”

The NBA situations O’Neill encountered were less stressful than those in college. The longer season made the professional game easier for him to work.
“The players played hard, but their ultimate goal was to be healthy for the playoffs,” O’Neill said. “They weren’t throwing their bodies all over the place. They paced themselves. That’s the difference between 82 games versus 35 games for college teams.”
When O’Neill’s one-year contract with the NBA expired, he hopped back into the NCAA grind for the 1990-91 season. His return culminated in Indianapolis with his first Final Four game. He was pleased to take the sport’s biggest stage but partially displeased about his assignment.

“I hung my head when I learned which game I was going to work,” O’Neill said about the semifinal between Duke and UNLV. “Vegas blew them out the previous year in the championship game, and they were a double-digit favorite. I thought the (North Carolina-Kansas) game was going to be more competitive.

“The atmosphere in the (Hoosier Dome) was electric from the moment we stepped onto the floor, and that got my juices going. When I saw those (60,000) people in the dome, I said to myself, ‘Don’t screw this up! Your family’s here and millions are watching this.’”
Much to O’Neill’s surprise — and anyone else not rooting for Duke — the Blue Devils upset the top-ranked, undefeated Runnin’ Rebels en route to capturing their first national championship.

O’Neill returned to the RCA Dome for the aforementioned 1997 title game. He officiated in two more Final Fours: Florida’s 2007 semifinal victory against UCLA in Atlanta and North Carolina’s 2009 championship win against Michigan State in Detroit. He had plenty of preparation for those games, as he was a frequent official in some of the NCAA’s most heated basketball rivalries, such as Indiana-Kentucky, Kansas-Oklahoma and Illinois-Missouri.

The one series omitted from his list is Duke-North Carolina because the Atlantic Coast Conference is the lone power conference he did not work. That hole in his résumé may be proof of his unquestioned success and high demand.

“I didn’t have any Saturdays open to give to the ACC,” he said, “and if you couldn’t give some Saturdays to the coordinators for those major conferences, you probably weren’t going to work in those leagues.”

Dale Kelley was one of those coordinators who commandeered many of O’Neill’s Saturdays. As the coordinator for five D-I conferences, he had enough games to keep O’Neill occupied.

“Tom was always on top of his game,” said Kelley, who accumulated 25 years as the coordinator for the Big 12, Sun Belt, Southland and Ohio Valley conferences and Conference USA. “I never worried about a game he worked for me. I knew it would go well, and if anything happened that needed resolution, I was sure Tom could handle it.”
Like O’Neill, Steve Welmer spread his officiating wings across a wide swath of the country. The two worked in the same conferences, so their names appeared together in many of the same box scores.

“We had seasons in which we worked 40 games together,” said Welmer, who totaled 31 years at Division I before retiring in 2011. “We clicked the first time we worked together. We had a background playing college baseball, and we liked to have a beer or two. Our officiating philosophy and calls were similar, so teams could count on our consistency. We liked to let the kids play a little bit.”

That old-school axiom of “letting the kids play” may be fading. Consistency now comes from constant video review, a trend O’Neill and some of his peers think has made officiating less art and more science.

“Hank Nichols (former national coordinator of men’s basketball officials) emphasized advantage/disadvantage,” O’Neill said. “If the contact didn’t affect the players, let it go … let them play through some contact.

“This current generation doesn’t do that. I’ve worked with guys who make ticky-tack calls at the end of a 20-point game. When I ask about it, they say, ‘If I pass on that, I’ll get an incorrect call.’ That’s unfortunate because most young officials are looking over their shoulders every time they blow their whistles. If I were in my 20s or 30s, it would drive me nuts!”

Fellow longtime official Ted Valentine echoes O’Neill’s sentiment.

“Tom and I came up in an era when we officiated more on basketball instincts,” said Valentine, a veteran of 39 Division I seasons and one of O’Neill’s Final Four partners in 1991 and 1997. “This current culture of officiating has too much micromanagement, and that’s not the best way to work.

“Tom can officiate by the seat of his pants. He knows when to blow the whistle and when not to blow it. He officiated the game the right way. He always had a good feel and total command for the game.”

Keeping command of the college game entails handling coaches, and O’Neill excelled at it. He relished the salty language that emerged occasionally.

“I enjoyed the coaches who swore more than those who didn’t because I have the tendency to swear,” he said. “If they swore at me first, I felt I could swear back at them, but I wouldn’t swear at coaches who didn’t swear.

“I was never afraid to give a technical foul. It’s like any other call in the game. Coaches need to know if they get out of line with 30 seconds left in the game, I might whack them.”

O’Neill may have taken a hard stance with coaches, but Kelley lauded his approach as the kind other officials should emulate.

“The scrutiny on officials has much to do with their mindset in how they interact with coaches,” Kelley said. “It takes a special person to wade through all those factors and get the job done, and Tom rose to the occasion time and time again.”

Welmer has seen those occasions more than he can count. O’Neill was no imposing figure, but his presence portended his fiery competitive streak.

“He’s fearless … he’s gutsy!” Welmer said. “No coach or player could intimidate him. He wouldn’t let anyone or any game get the best of him. He knew people didn’t come to the games to watch him; he was there to be a part of the game and make sure he got the calls right.”

Without definitive data, one can only estimate the number of fouls and violations O’Neill whistled in his 44 years, including 80 games in 28 NCAA tournaments. He did not linger on questionable calls, except for a traveling violation near the end of the Villanova-North Carolina game during the 2005 Elite Eight.

“It’s the only call I’ve ever taken home with me,” he said, “and that’s because it was my last call of the season. I didn’t hold on to stuff like that, but without another game to work, I had all offseason to think about it.”

His offseasons feature the Tom O’Neill Basketball Officials Camp, and its return in 2021 after a pandemic-induced hiatus will be the 46th edition. For the past 15 years, his operating partner has been Harry Bohn, the head basketball clinician for the Illinois High School Association (IHSA) and an assigner for Chicago-area high school and college conferences. The camp gives him the best of two worlds.

“I coordinate what’s taught throughout the state for the IHSA’s certified clinic,” Bohn said. “We bring in the top young D-I officials as observers so our campers always get the latest information on mechanics.

“Tom’s status as one of the elite officials in the country brings credibility to the camp. We’ve attracted some of the best officials from Illinois, Wisconsin and Indiana. It’s a Godsend for me as an assigner because I can watch officials before hiring them.”
Dan Dorian attended his first O’Neill Camp a few weeks after graduating high school in 1986. It was the first step of an officiating journey that has led him to the Mid-American, Big Sky and Western Athletic conferences.

“Dan Chrisman (O’Neill’s former business partner) noticed me at the camp, and when he introduced me to Tom, he said, ‘This guy doesn’t know what he’s doing, but he knows the game,’” Dorian said. “From there, Tom started teaching me how to officiate. He loaded me up with freshman and sophomore games in SICA.”

After a few years of sturdy high school schedules, Dorian developed an itch for Division I exposure, but his mentor would not help scratch it.

“I started asking if I could go to a D-I camp, and Tom told me I wasn’t ready,” Dorian said. “I worked high school ball for 12 years and a couple years of NAIA and Division III before he told me I was ready to go to a D-I camp.

“He gave me the green light in 2003 and advised me to attend Dale Kelley’s camp. The following year, Dale hired me and things took off for me from there.”

The business of officiating has been a boon for O’Neill and his family, and business became personal on Nov. 30, 2001, when Marquette hosted Texas Southern. In what he calls his proudest moment, O’Neill officiated with two of his sons, Rick and Tom Jr. It marked the first time a Division I officiating crew comprised a father and two sons. A couple years later, Michael joined Rick and Tom Jr. to become the first trio of brothers to officiate the same Division I game.

“We had a natural ease working with one another,” said Tom Jr. “I knew neither one of them would sell me down the river or call my supervisor to say, ‘This guy stinks!’ I was comfortable with them because we’d been taught the same principles about officiating.”

A different sense of paternal pride had been O’Neill’s prime inspiration in the final years of his career. His father, Joe O’Neill, was his biggest fan, and when he died in May 2019 at age 97, so did much of O’Neill’s motivation to continue officiating.

“My dad loved watching my games,” O’Neill said, “so he was my main reason for working the last few years. He had something to look forward to, and I liked providing him that pleasure. I prided myself in working for him. When he passed, I lost that edge.”
With basketball now in his rearview mirror, O’Neill has more time for diamond action, of both the softball and baseball varieties. His remaining sports obligation lies with USA Softball, the nation’s governing body of softball, formerly known as the American Softball Association. As the commissioner for northern Illinois since 1984, he coordinates tournaments for 3,000 girls’ fast-pitch teams and men’s 12-inch and 16-inch teams.

Youth baseball now is O’Neill’s favorite pastime. The former college shortstop and second baseman helps coach his grandsons, Anthony and Nicholas.

“It’s a treat for me to watch them grow up and to share baseball with them,” O’Neill said. “I can relive my boyhood memories through them as they get better playing the game.

“I achieved everything I wanted to do in officiating. I met a lot of great people and had a lot of fun. Not many people get to do what they love for as long as I did and leave on their own terms. I think things turned out pretty good.”
Marcel Kerr is a freelance writer from Chicago.

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However, out of that dark moment came an extremely positive light. Those resignations and the ensuing layoffs sowed the seeds for something much bigger. What started as a program to help umpires who lost their jobs in the labor dispute paved the way for what officially became UMPS CARE Charities in 2006, a life-changing endeavor to provide major league support to at-risk youth, children with cancer and other serious illnesses, foster care children and military families. In addition, UMPS CARE supports families facing financial need within the baseball community.

It is a major undertaking, considering umpires are on the road for roughly seven to eight months of the year, constantly in and out of airports and hotels and in a different city every weekend. But it is in those chaotic months when the true character of the umpires is both defined and revealed.

“I don’t have words in my vocabulary to describe the hearts and minds of the umpires,” 22-year veteran MLB umpire Paul Emmel said. “Everyone wants to evaluate your contribution through how much money you give. Being on the board, the amount of time and effort and thought that every single umpire on staff, including the minor league umpires, I mean the time they put in is overwhelming to speak about.”

It is those contributions that led to UMPS CARE Charities being recognized as the 2020-21 NASO Gold Whistle Award recipient. It is only the second time a group and not an individual has been recognized for the award, and the first since 2006 (when it was awarded to the V Foundation’s Blow the Whistle on Cancer program), speaking to the impressive work the charity has accomplished.

“The dedication that the major league umpires deliver to UMPS CARE has impacted thousands of young people and families in need,” Commissioner of Baseball Robert D. Manfred Jr. said in a statement to Referee. “It has always been a pleasure to see the organization’s exemplary service to others in the communities of our game. On behalf of Major League Baseball, I congratulate the umpires and the staff of UMPS CARE on this great honor from the National Association of Sports Officials.”

UMPS CARE, which is based in Edgewater, Md., has a relatively small full-time staff, which makes the outreach even more impressive. Comprised of executive director Jennifer Skolochenko-Platt, program director Jennifer Jopling and marketing manager business administrator Amy Rosewater, the three-person staff is busy trying to coordinate schedules with umpires who are scattered all over the country. Along with the full-time staff, the charity also has Deanna Reynolds, wife of MLB crew chief and UMPS Care Vice President Jim Reynolds, as volunteer coordinator. It takes a lot of planning, trust and coordination to make everything run as smoothly as it does. On top of the outreach programs, the charity is busy planning fundraising events (such as golf tournaments, bowling events, auctions, and virtual Steaks and Stories events that allow spectators the opportunity to hear some of the best stories in umpiring straight from those involved). And it takes a well-coordinated effort to pull off so many events successfully.

“Without those four, we’d be sunk,” Emmel said. “We are umpires. We don’t know how to run a charity. To have that staff is incredible.”

Prior to UMPS CARE attaining nonprofit status, the umpires informally held events — mostly attending hospitals to visit sick children and giving underprivileged children the opportunity to see ballgames in person. Those two programs ultimately merged into one when UMPS CARE became a formalized charity in 2006. And since that time, those two programs have continuously grown and more outreach programs have been added to give back.

“We are in the process of growing,” Skolochenko-Platt said. “It has been quite a journey from when I came on board in 2012 to now. The coolest part of this is it started a revolution, in a good way. It created this amazing ripple effect. That ripple is continuing to grow.”

Blue For Kids

One of the flagship programs for UMPS CARE, and perhaps its most impactful, is the Blue for Kids program. Especially for a child, hospital visits can be a frightening time. UMPS CARE is working hard to make that experience a little less upsetting and help bring smiles to children and their families. As umpires travel across the country, the program brings crews to the bedside of children with life-threatening illnesses. And the umpires bring a Build-A-Bear Workshop with them to allow children to outfit stuffed teddy bears, puppies or monkeys, all while sharing words of encouragement and helping take the families’ minds off the hospital for a bit. The umpires also bring the host cities’ team mascot with them to the hospital when the mascot is available.

“The kids love it,” Rosewater said. “How can you not? They light up. They are kids who are involved in medical treatments and having chemotherapy. And then these guys come in and make their day.”

UMPS CARE made its 175th hospital visit with a trip to Chicago this summer and set up a hospital visit to coincide with the MLB All-Star game in Denver. Since its inception in 2006, the program has donated over 17,500 Build-A-Bears and generally makes about 15 visits each season. And while the children get a positive boost by having the umpires bring them a furry friend, it may just be the parents that get the bigger pick-me-up.

“The parents are more moved than the kids,” said Gary Darling, a 28-year MLB umpire who retired in 2014 and is the current president of UMPS CARE. “The parents are the ones I’ve noticed are very appreciative of the guys going there and spending time with them for a bit. The parents’ reaction has been most impactful. Someone else does care and takes a little pain away from what their children are going through. Numerous parents have written emails after or meet us in the hallway and are almost crying, thanking us for being there. The parents can see they aren’t doing this by themselves and others care about their kids.”

Even COVID-19 couldn’t stop UMPS CARE from delivering smiles to children. During the pandemic, UMPS CARE teamed up with its Child Life partners to make sure the special deliveries still happened, often setting up Zoom calls or closed-captioned television with kids to allow question-and-answer sessions. In addition to the bears, UMPS CARE provided baseball-themed activity books and branded boxes of crayons to bring some sense of normalcy to the hospital playrooms.

“It is so heartwarming because most of us have kids,” Emmel said. “From the kids’ perspective, when you go into a hospital, especially those hospitals, you don’t get to make choices anymore. The doctors choose everything for you. To walk in with those bears and outfits and tell parents, ‘You don’t get to choose, the kid gets to choose.’ The mere decision-making process they haven’t experienced in so long, it wakes those kids up. It puts smiles on their faces. Those little human experiences don’t make the papers, but they’re there in every hospital visit.”

Blue Crew Tickets

While baseball is all about the “boys of summer,” there are some kids who live in the shadows of major league ballparks and never have the opportunity to go see a game. UMPS CARE created a program called Blue Crew Tickets, which aims to change that. At-risk youth, children battling chronic illness, kids in foster care and military families in every major league market get the opportunity to go behind the scenes with the umpires and create a lifetime memory.

The program started and was founded through the efforts of Mike DiMuro, a 20-year MLB umpire who retired in 2019, Marvin Hudson, a 22-year MLB veteran umpire, and Samuel Dearth, a former MiLB umpire and former executive director of UMPS CARE. Hudson and Dearth umpired in the minor leagues together and when Hudson made it to the majors, Dearth, who had become a Big Brother with Big Brothers/Big Sisters, brought his Little Brother to the game and gave him a behind-the-scenes look at the ballpark.

“They kind of started that program through that experience and it has really evolved,” Rosewater said. “There are over 800 participants a year. Just that one child and one Big Brother made a huge difference and a huge impact.”

Since its inception, umpires have welcomed over 8,000 participants to enjoy a major league ballgame. And in 2019, all 30 Triple-A teams partnered with UMPS CARE to give more opportunities. The flexibility at that level allows participants the opportunity to be involved in some really unique opportunities such as participating in the plate conference or getting to say, “Play ball,” before the start of the game.

“These are neat elements to the game,” Rosewater said. “Understanding what umpires have to do to prepare, especially if they are behind the plate that day. A general fan doesn’t even realize what goes into it.”

During the 2020 season and the beginning of the 2021 season, COVID-19 severely impacted the normalcy of major league games. UMPS CARE, however, adapted and created some unique opportunities. UMPS CARE set up 15 different chat sessions between umpires and 307 participants, giving a virtual opportunity to ask questions and interact with umpires. In essence, the Blue Crew Ticket program became the Virtual Blue Crew Ticket Program. Through its partnership with Topps Baseball Cards, UMPS CARE was able to provide those participants with their own virtual baseball cards to make the interaction with the umpires even more special.

These opportunities for kids are truly life changing. Seven years ago, Emmel was in San Francisco for a series at now Oracle Park. Prior to the game, Emmel had a chance to interact with a group of at-risk youth and show them around the park thanks to the Blue Crew Ticket program. In that short amount of time prior to the game, those few minutes ended up meaning everything to those kids.

“These kids are very quiet, very timid and have no voice,” Emmel said. “They see themselves as inconspicuous and Pablo Sandoval came over and spoke in Spanish to the kids and translated, ‘I know you are on this side of the big, brick wall and you never thought you’d see yourself on that side. Most of the players out here came from humble beginnings as well.’ The kids went from feeling insignificant to a superstar telling them, ‘I came from humble beginnings and look where I am now.’ It is truly life-changing to me, and that’s where I’d like to see the ticket program go. And it is.”

All-Star Scholarship

Emmel, who has been on the board of UMPS CARE for four years and has been the secretary for the past three years, has made major contributions to the charity, especially to the scholarship program. In the past, the charity awarded scholarship money, but he said there really wasn’t a rhyme or reason to how the money was used and some of the scholarship recipients had dropped out.

“I took a hard look at the scholarship program we have and I wanted to move the charity from just giving back to actually changing lives,” Emmel said. “We really need a better return on investment for our program. To do that, we had to change the program from giving away money to actually helping these kids graduate. Having them come back and help with the committee and grow the committee with their experience through the program. We went from a giveaway to actually changing lives.”

The updated scholarship program, called the All-Star College Scholarship, is for children adopted later in life and provides a college education to students who might not otherwise be able to afford one. The scholarship is for children adopted at or after the age of 13 and each year, one student is selected to receive a $10,000 scholarship. That money annually goes toward tuition, books and other college-related expenses. Since its inception, UMPS CARE has given $282,500 to scholarship recipients.

UMPS CARE awarded $40,000 in scholarship funding in 2019 and 2020 and will be awarding the same in 2021. The 2019 recipient, Vitalik Walle, fit perfectly into Emmel’s criteria. Walle was one of 20 applicants and his resume stood out to the scholarship committee. His parents died when he was very young and he was placed in an orphanage in Ukraine. He lived in the orphanage for nearly 10 years before being adopted by a Colorado family when he was 15. He is currently a junior at Colorado Christian University and hopes to become a police officer upon graduation.

The 2020 scholarship award was special for UMPS CARE as it lost one of its own following the 2019 season. Eric Cooper, a 20-year MLB veteran and instrumental member of the UMPS CARE team, died after developing a blood clot following off-season knee surgery. The 2020 All-Star Scholarship was named in his memory in an effort to carry on his legacy. Cooper had a major impact on the raising of funds for the 2020 scholarship prior to his passing.

The 2020 scholarship was awarded to Marcus Lo from Palm Beach, Calif., who attends the University of Southern California. Lo’s mother died when he was 4 and his father died while Lo was in middle school. His uncle initially adopted him and cared for him, but ultimately Lo moved in with his grandmother. Lo was a unanimous decision for the scholarship as he started his own nonprofit and even went on a mission trip to China and Korea shortly after his father died to assist children living in group homes.

“The scholarship program really makes a life-changing impact,” Darling said. “It’s not just a smile for the day but it is setting them up for adult lifehood. Paul (Emmel) has taken over that program and made it more efficient and made great choices. I wish we had enough money to give numerous scholarships every year. The hard part is trying to figure out which one is best as so many are deserving.”

Official Leadership Program

One of the newest programs for UMPS CARE is the Official Leadership Program. According to Rosewater, the idea for the program emerged during COVID-19, which provided a pause for the charity to look at what it was doing. What emerged was a program that kicked off this summer in three cities. The new program aims to provide a solution to a nationwide problem — the growing shortage of officials impacting all youth sports. This new program provides leadership skills and employment opportunities for underserved youth.

The pilot programs launched at MLB Youth Academies in Washington, D.C., and Houston, and the DREAM Charter School in New York City, in June. The six-week course offers both classroom and onfield instruction. UMPS CARE partnered with MiLB umpire Jen Pawol and her Evolve Junior Umpire Program to teach umpire mechanics so the students will be able to umpire baseball and softball games at the conclusion of the course. The goal is to encourage, engage and mentor the teens and help them develop leadership qualities, connect them with employment opportunities and to mentor them through the process of becoming an official and beyond.

“I am most proud that UMPS CARE took the time to look at the problems facing the world of umpiring and developed a thoughtful way to be a part of the solution,” Skolochenko-Platt said. “There is a huge shortage of youth sports officials across the country. By training and recruiting these young people, we hope to help diversify the base of umpires, introduce officiating to teens who otherwise may not be aware of the craft and offer them a direct line to jobs in the field. In the process, we are removing as many barriers as possible and connecting them with mentors to set them up for success.”
While the program is still in its infancy, UMPS CARE is hoping to expand the program and create a lasting legacy that will help more teens.

“We hope to continue to grow this program and expand into new markets with the goal of developing more teens from underserved communities to become leaders on and off the field,” Skolochenko-Platt said.

For all of those programs to work effectively, it takes a lot of volunteer hours. In 2020, umpires donated 1,378 volunteer hours to the charity. Through May of this year, 944 volunteer hours have been donated. As the charity continues to grow and find new ways to outreach, that number will continue to grow. And as it grows, UMPS CARE continues to work with other professional organizations to help impact the communities in which they live.

“They are generously showing others how to be leaders, not just within the officiating industry, but outside of the industry as well,” said Barry Mano, founder and president of NASO. “They are shining a light on what a group of individuals can do when they are committed to something. They are classic Gold Whistle material.”

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“2019 was an incredible year for me,” said the Akron, Ohio, resident, whose star is rising in the umpiring world faster than a 100-mile-an-hour heater. “Not only did I work my first-ever NCAA Division I baseball game, I worked the Little League Baseball World Series. How blessed I am. Both of those were at the top of my goal list.

“But once you achieve some of your goals, it’s time to write more. And that’s exactly what I’ve been doing. I’ve never believed that there’s a limit or a peak at which you can’t go any further. You can always find a new goal to set, in every facet of life.”

Elliott Dine failed to mention that she became only the second woman to umpire behind the plate in the championship game of the Little League World Series in Williamsport, Pa., an honor that Tom Rawlings, director of umpire development for Little League International, said was well deserved.

“When we rate the umpires at the Little League World Series, at the end of the day we take those that we feel were the six best leading up to the championship game and put them on the field for the final. All of us had Kelly number one on the list. She was rock solid in the championship game. There wasn’t anything during six innings that I would have questioned.”

Elliott Dine called her LLWS experience “the honor of a lifetime.” She recalled, “I can still feel the awe of walking out on the Lamade field (Howard J. Lamade Stadium) for my first plate game. Over 24,000 people in attendance. The skill of the players was incredible. The game happens at warp speed at that level … fastballs from just 46 feet away, whackers at first base that seem to happen in thousandths of a second after the crack of the bat.

“I was so excited for the kids. I couldn’t stop grinning. But I kept reminding myself that I was there to do a job, to focus and give it my best. It was over way too soon.”
She thought back to the last out of the game between Curaçao and Louisiana. The Curaçao batter fouled off 10 pitches and then lined a drive at the Louisiana shortstop, who caught the ball for the last out of the contest.

“It happened so fast,” she said. “Then the craziest level of noise and celebration. What an incredible experience.”

Elliott Dine also called working her first D-I baseball game in the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference in 2019 “an amazing feeling, to accomplish that goal, and then begin to set new ones.” She was scheduled for two D-I nonconference games in 2020 (one in the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference, the other in the Horizon League) before the pandemic put things on hold.

“I am hungry for the challenge of continued advancement, but I know that this takes time and lots and lots of continued hard work,” she said. “I am grateful for every opportunity that I have to work, whether it be a youth game or a college game.”

After attending Fairview High School in Erie, Pa., Elliott Dine attended the U.S. Naval Academy from 1987-89 before transferring to and graduating from the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C., in 1991 with a bachelor’s degree in nursing. Selected for the first-ever ROTC scholarship for the Navy Nurse Corps in 1989, she was commissioned an ensign in 1991 upon graduation.

Honorably discharged as a lieutenant commander, she then earned an RN license in 1991 and graduated from the University of Akron with a master’s degree in education in 2016, which led to a career change to teaching. She is presently employed as a PLTW Biomedical Science teacher at North High School (NHS) with the Akron, Ohio, public school system. NHS is a 100 percent high-need, urban school; nearly half of its 900 students are refugees from throughout the world (20 different nations), making it the most diverse high school in the state.

Elliott Dine was a superb athlete in high school and college. In high school, she earned All-America honors in the breaststroke and was heavily recruited by a number of D-I colleges. But duty called. “I had also been recruited by the U.S. Naval Academy,” she said. “When I earned my appointment to the academy by Sen. John Heinz, the stage was set. I became a midshipman in the summer of 1987.”

She threw the javelin at the Naval Academy and set the record for the female javelin throw there and later, at Catholic University. After graduating from Catholic and getting commissioned in the U.S. Navy Nurse Corps, she earned an invitation to compete for the U.S. Navy Track and Field team, and was given temporary active duty to the team in 1991. Unfortunately, she ruptured her ACL during a practice throw, ending her career as a competitor.

Elliott Dine credits her husband, Jeff, and three sons, Steven, 23, Alex, 21, and Aiden, 15, for being supportive of her various undertakings. “There is no way I could have pursued this (umpiring) passion and achieved what I have without (their) love and support,” she said. “I’ve missed many of my sons’ games to work my own. My family is simply incredible.”

Elliott Dine is an ardent volunteer, which takes up much of her free time. “Jeff and Aiden and I are all longtime advocates for the American Diabetes Association (Aiden was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes at 15 months old). I also enjoy volunteering for Little League of course, in any way I can. I’ve volunteered as an umpire for 11 years now, but I’ve also volunteered as a tournament assistant and coach for many years.”

She is part of a small group of female umpires that includes Janet Thomas, Ila Valcarcel and Liz Hammerschmidt who work with Jim Kirk, owner of Ump-Attire.com, to advocate for female umpire safety gear and uniforms. “It’s hard enough for all of us to do the job we do. But when umpires have to take the field without proper-fitting safety equipment or well-fitting uniforms, it makes our job even more difficult,” she said. “I’m also greatly looking forward to a new role in working with the Wounded Warrior Umpire Academy. Their mission is to provide instruction, training, placement and peer-to-peer support for military veterans interested in baseball.”

Kelly’s dad, the late Tom Elliott, passed along his love of baseball to his energetic daughter at a young age. That eventually led to her coming home one day and telling her husband she wanted to coach baseball. Between the couple’s two oldest boys, her teams won four different Little League championships over the years. And that led to umpiring.

“One bright Saturday, my son and I were walking home from baseball practice (we live just down the street from the baseball park),” she said. “I looked over and saw two Little League teams ready to play a game, but no umpire in sight. I went over to the field and offered to officiate. I donned some rusty old gear out of the lockbox, put a balloon chest protector in my hand and started the game. I’m sure I was awful. I distinctly remember a batted ball had landed on home plate. As the catcher picked it up to throw out the runner, I came up big and loud: ‘Foul!’ I didn’t know that I was totally incorrect, but I do remember that I absolutely sold it.

“After the game, a friend came up to me. He said, ‘Kelly, you know that was a fair ball, right?’ I turned about five shades of red, but from then on, I was hooked. I knew I wanted to umpire.”

She met a man she calls “her first mentor,” Dale West of Barberton, Ohio, at a Little League game. “I remember that he didn’t miss a beat when I told him I wanted to be an umpire. He just grinned and looked at me and said, ‘Sure! When do you want to start?’ He didn’t give a hoot if I was a man or woman. And neither did the other small core of District 3 Little League umpires. They just brought me into the fold and started teaching me how to umpire.”

She loved umpiring so much she decided to try her hand at softball as well. Her first Ohio High School Athletic Association (OHSAA) umpire certification was in that sport in 2010. Then just a year later, she earned her OHSAA baseball certification and attended the 2011 Little League Central Region week-long umpire school that April, where she met mentors Jason Kelley and Greg Ramos.

Elliott Dine moved through the softball umpiring ranks quickly. She worked her first OHSAA state tournament in 2014 and then again in 2016. She also worked ASA/USA Softball tournaments and attended the ASA/USA Softball National Umpire School. She moved up to the college level, working some D-III games. To keep her hand in baseball, she continued volunteering to work Little League games, including postseason games, and was selected to officiate the 2013 Little League Baseball Regional in Indianapolis, where she earned a recommendation to work the Little League Baseball World Series.

“It wasn’t until a 2014 clinic that I got ‘noticed’ by (assigner) Larnie Martin. He heard how much I wanted to work baseball, and he assigned me to every local summer baseball tournament that I could work in 2014 and 2015,” she said.

Then came some tough news. In the late fall of 2015, Jeff Dine was diagnosed with cancer at age 47. Doctors discovered a softball-sized tumor on his left sacrum. Three months later in January 2016, he underwent a grueling 28-hour surgery to remove the tumor and rebuild his lower back.

That year, Elliott Dine worked another full season of high school softball, including her second state tournament, and worked as many baseball tournaments as she could in the summer. “One evening, my husband and I sat talking about the future. I decided right then that I really wanted to commit to working just baseball,” she said. “Jeff’s recovery made us both re-examine all of our priorities.”

Unfortunately, Jeff’s cancer metastasized about 18 months after his initial surgery in January 2016. In the past five years he’s had close to four years of chemotherapy and three rounds of radiation. “His cancer is terminal,” Elliot Dine said. “But because there’s so little data, doctors won’t place a timeframe on survival for him. He’s weary, fatigued a lot of the time. He deals with more pain than anyone I know. Yet he never complains.”
Aiden’s diabetes is also a concern. “We religiously keep our appointments every three months, and we and Aiden are as strict as possible with his diabetes, his activity, his diet, etc.,” Elliott Dine said.

As if this isn’t enough to deal with for one family, their son Steven deals with Primary Variable Immune Deficiency. His immune system doesn’t make antibodies to battle illness as it should. “Every four weeks, he sticks a bunch of needles in his stomach and receives huge amounts of fluid: antibody infusions,” Elliott Dine said. “Stephen has had to undergo multiple surgeries for a variety of complications. But to look at him, you wouldn’t know it. He played football, still plays rugby, got high grades despite missing close to 40 days of school some years.”

“It’s amazing what Kelly and her family have to deal with health-wise,” said Scott Taylor, the NCAA Division II national coordinator for baseball umpires. “I think perhaps she uses umpiring somewhat as a way to escape, for a little while, the pressures and worry. She is an incredibly strong person.”

Stephen Dine was interested in umpiring and was invited to attend a day clinic at Kent State University for potential college baseball umpires. Steven, as a ninth-grader, was the youngest person to be certified by the OHSAA for both baseball and softball. In high school, he even worked a few NCAA fall softball games. Elliott Dine thought she would attend the clinic with her son.

“Steven decided not to go,” recalled mom. “He was no longer happy with officiating and wanted to try other things. But I went. That day, (assigners) Jim Lizer and Jon Saphire and Andy Dudones watched a few of us work some showcase games. Toward the end, Jon came up to me and said, ‘Kelly, how serious are you? Do you want to work college baseball?’ I said yes, and he said, ‘Good. Because you should.”’

Elliott Dine attended her first camp, operated by Bruce Doane, in late August 2016. “I met and was instructed by (assigners and fellow umpires) Brent Rice, Nick Sweeney, Mark Uyl, Scott Taylor, Mike Duffy and Tim Farwig, among others,” she said. “Mind you, I still hadn’t worked a varsity baseball game yet in my career, just Little League and summer baseball.
“At the end of the camp, Scott Taylor walked up and said, ‘I think you have the talent to work college baseball if you want to work hard and stick with it.’”

A few months later, in the spring of 2017, she indeed worked her first NCAA baseball games, thanks to assigners Derron Brown and Chuck Adya.

Taylor is a big fan of Elliott Dine’s work. Noting that she continues to hone her skills as an umpire at the collegiate level, he said as a plate umpire “she is one of the best out there at any level. I watched the Little League World Series Championship game she worked and she missed one call on a very close pitch. Major League umpires may miss 11 or 12 pitches a game and she missed just one and she knew which one.

“Her positioning is superb and she is consistent for both a left-handed or right-handed batter. She reminds me of (former Minor League Baseball umpire) Pam Postema as a plate umpire. We need more diversity in umpiring and obviously Kelly fits that bill.”

As for being a woman in a predominately man’s world, Elliott Dine said, “I do think that, as a whole, diverse umpires have to work harder to prove themselves and to change long-standing perceptions. Just because a profession used to look have a certain ‘look’ doesn’t mean it should continue that way.

“If you only seek out those who seem to fit into a certain mold, then you are also overlooking a very large percentage of the talent pool. The last thing that any woman wants is to be a ‘token.’ We want to earn what we are given, and to be recognized for our talents and effort, not our gender.

“Nobody would take me seriously for years. Everybody wanted me to be a really good softball umpire. Nobody wanted me to be a baseball umpire. No matter who I told, no matter how many times I said it, I could not get baseball games. Assigners, peers, you name it. … I think they just hoped I would forget about this ‘baseball thing.’”

But she didn’t stick to softball; she had dreams to follow. She attended baseball mechanics clinics “and guys there would just discount me,” she said. “Nobody was ever aggressive or in my face, just the opposite. They’d look at me, turn their backs and just smile knowingly at each other. Some of them thought it was ‘nice’ I was there. But no one took me seriously.

“Then I’d come back the next year, and the next. They’d look surprised that I was back. And I could read the thoughts on some of my peers’ faces: ‘How long will she keep this up? Doesn’t she know that nobody’s taking her seriously?’”

Elliott Dine credits Martin for helping drive through the male negativity.

“He was the one who came up to me at the 2014 clinic, the fourth year I’d attended,” she said. “He said, ‘Girl, where you been all my life?’ He was an evaluator that year watching me call pitches in the gym with 30 other guys. Then he told everyone loudly, ‘That’s the best I’ve seen all day!’ For the first time (outside of Little League), I was noticed for my skill as a baseball umpire.”

“Larnie understood exactly where I was coming from, because he’s lived it, too. Without him and without my Little League mentors (West, Kelley, Ramos and Chet Cooper), I wouldn’t be doing baseball.” She also credits Doane and his instructor crew who “really supported me (and treated me like an equal)” at her first-ever college clinic.

Elliott Dine has made personal and professional strides, but it remains an equality struggle for female umpires in all codes of baseball, she said. “The ‘higher-ups’ (MLB supervisors, NCAA coordinators, etc.) are good with it. … They want change to happen. But our peers, local assigners and others around the nation, it’s an uphill battle with so many of them. It’s got to change.

“Two other umpires who have been both good friends and role models for me: current Minor League Baseball umpires Jen Pawol and Emma Charlesworth-Seiler,” Elliott Dine said. “I believe that Jen and I are the only two women who have ever worked both NCAA softball and NCAA baseball.”

She added with some degree of optimism, “It’s slowly getting better. But there are miles to go before the biases and inequities in baseball officiating catch up to the advances made in football, basketball and soccer officiating.”

Conscious of her “uniqueness” in the baseball umpiring world and the attention it brings, Elliott Dine strives to be a good role model for all, not just females.

“I’m a wife, a mother, a daughter, a sister, a friend, a teacher and an umpire. I take those roles very seriously,” she said. “My work as both a teacher and an umpire directly impacts many young lives. I need to strive to be sure that it’s a positive impact I make. I also take great pride in being a Little League umpire. We have an obligation to these young players to be positive leaders and to be positive influences on them.”

She added, “If a young girl or a woman decides to try something new, chase down a dream or break a mold because they saw me pursuing my passion, then I’m blessed and thankful that I may have played a tiny part in their path to success.”

The post Kelly Dine Covers All The Bases appeared first on Referee.com.

But Fried, 22, is also autistic, which he agrees provides challenges for his chosen avocation, something he got into by accident.

“I started in 2016 after graduating high school,” he said. “I went to Coach (Morgan) Wootten’s camp (of DeMatha High School fame). I had signed up to coach, but when I went to the meeting I was one of the last ones called, which meant I would be officiating.

“So, I officiated for four weeks there and continued with four years of intramural ball while in college. I learned to trust the process, tried to get comfortable and I found myself getting better each game. I got thrown into tough situations (and) had to trust my instincts.”

Fried worked at his craft — going to high school games and studying how other officials did things.

“I discovered that good communication and trust is so important as an official,” he said.

Fried helped himself by joining Court Club Elite, the basketball officials mentoring program operated by retired NBA official Ed T. Rush. He caught Rush’s eye, who put out an encouraging tweet about Fried.

“Love stories of overcoming odds,” Rush wrote. “Recent stories about Will Fried should inspire those who see the odds against them. … You go Will. RESPECT.”

With that boost, Fried continued to officiate when he moved from Maryland to Kansas to study for his masters degree at Fort Hays State. There, he found a trusted mentor in official and assigner Scott Goodheart.

“He saw how hard working I am,” Fried said.

Fried admits it hasn’t always been easy officiating with autism.

“It’s occasionally tough not to react (when someone gets mad), but I’ve learned how to be patient,” he said. “Trust the process and be calm. I depend on the schools and hope that the coaches and ADs are aware of my disabilities.

“Some great officials have really helped me, but there are some who are just not used to (someone like me) yet. I’ve also had the chance to officiate players with autism, too. It’s unique to see them play and how they work with their teams.”

Fried would like to take officiating to the next level — earning varsity high school assignments and making the leap to college ball.

He takes inspiration from the late Kobe Bryant’s well-known “Mamba Mentality” because he not only wants to help himself, but also aid others with autism who want to officiate.

“I’ve gotten this far because of self-determination and I want others to be able to accomplish what I have done,” Fried said. “I want to push others along, help them achieve greatness, too.”

The post Ability, Not Disability appeared first on Referee.com.

But over the course of his career, Reynolds has been tested, both on and off the field, and confronted an assortment of personal and professional challenges.

James N. Reynolds IV grew up near Hartford, Conn., where he was a three-sport athlete at South Catholic High. His father, Jim III, umpired in local youth baseball leagues and officiated hockey. On a few rare occasions, Reynolds would work the bases for his dad when no one else was available.

“He was one of the guys in town that umpired quite a bit,” Reynolds said. “I think the first game I ever worked, one of the guys didn’t show up, so my dad asked me to work first base. I probably worked two or three Little League games my whole life but I certainly remember my dad going and working games.”

When he enrolled at the University of Connecticut, Reynolds was focused on a career in television news, not calling balls and strikes. But a chance meeting with a high school opponent turned dorm mate changed the course of his life. That dorm mate was Dan Iassogna, who had grown up in Trumbull, Conn., and attended St. Joseph High. He and Reynolds had played football and baseball against each other.

Iassogna’s sights were set on an umpiring career; he had been working games in and around his hometown during the summer months.

One of Iassogna’s friends had played freshman baseball at UConn and told him about a one-credit class on baseball rules that met one night a week and was taught by Andy Baylock, Connecticut’s head baseball coach.

“So, the following semester, I signed up for it,” Iassogna said. “Jimmy and I got to talking and I said, ‘Hey, do you want to umpire?’”

Reynolds was, to say the least, reluctant. “It took Danny two years to convince me to do this,” he recalled, “because I really wasn’t interested. He wore me out.”

Baylock, who spent 40 years in UConn’s baseball program, including 24 as head coach before retiring in 2003, started the class after befriending former MLB umpire Al Forman.

“He gave me a whole bunch of manuals on mechanics and so forth,” Baylock said. “I learned the mechanics, studied the rulebook and started that class. I had maybe eight guys; that included Jimmy and Dan.”

In addition to spending time in the classroom, the novice umpires would call balls and strikes during UConn bullpen sessions. But the real payoff came when Reynolds and Iassogna found themselves umpiring college JV games, which they did during their last two years of college.

The arrangement suited all parties concerned since Baylock’s umpire budget for non-varsity games was zero.

“We would do the JV games and the varsity fall games,” Reynolds said. “When everyone else was on spring break, Danny and I were working four games a weekend. By the end of junior year, we decided to try umpire school.”

Baylock says the two friends’ mutual passion for umpiring was obvious. “They took it very seriously,” he said. “In the summertime they’d be doing youth ball, they were doing a local twilight league in Hartford, they got on the local boards.”

In spring 1991, Reynolds graduated from UConn with a B.A. in communications journalism. He had interned with WFSB-TV, the CBS affiliate in Hartford, during his senior year and the station had expressed interest in hiring him after he graduated.

“That’s what I really thought I was going to do,” Reynolds said. “They seemed very interested in me; I had a great time there and learned a lot.”

In winter 1992, Reynolds and Iassogna — who had earned a degree in English from UConn — enrolled at the Jim Evans Umpire Academy in Florida.

“We had each other which, at least for me, was huge,” Reynolds said. “You’ve got somebody to talk about whatever you’re going through on a daily basis. We were roommates at umpire school. We were college graduates and I think my mentality was, ‘Why not me?’”

Iassogna approached umpire school with the same mindset. “We probably weren’t the best physical specimens,” he said. “We were just two skinny guys. But like umpiring now, the rules are the great equalizer. So, if you could do well in the rules, you could be an integral part of every crew.”

Upon graduation from the Evans Academy, Reynolds and Iassogna were hired by the New York-Penn League and spent the 1983 season as partners.

On one occasion, Baylock made the hour drive to Pittsfield, Mass., to watch the two work. “I drove up and I was so thrilled to see those two guys on the field,” he said. “Then, I went over to the umpires’ room where they were in like a little closet.”

Reynolds and Iassogna were never crewmates after that season, but they stayed in close contact as they traversed separate, but largely parallel, paths to what they hoped would be the major leagues.

“We had each other,” Reynolds said. “We were really, really good friends so whether we were partners, like we were in the New York-Penn League, or when I was in the (California League) and he was in the Carolina League, I could just pick up the phone and I had somebody to talk me through my situations or talk me through my attitude.”

Reynolds gradually climbed the minor-league ladder, spending three years at the Class A level, two in Double-A and two more in Triple-A, but never spending more than a single season in any one league, until 1999 when he started his second season in the International League (IL).

Iassogna was also in the IL at the time and he and Reynolds, along with their peers in Triple-A, were hoping for a call to the major leagues.

“If a contracted staff guy had some time off, you hoped that you were in a good spot,” Iassogna said. “If you were working in Rochester or Buffalo (in the IL), when somebody in Toronto went down with an injury, you hoped that they would call you up.
“There were no cell phones; they would just call your hotel room or call the ballpark. And if they couldn’t get you, they just had to go to the next guy.”

In June of that year, Reynolds got a call from Marty Springstead, supervisor of AL umpires at the time, to start as a fill-in.
A promotion to the big leagues would normally be cause for celebration. But in the summer of 1999, MLB was involved in a labor dispute with the Major League Umpires Association (MLUA).

That July, 57 MLB umpires submitted their resignations en masse, effective Sept. 2. Some of the umpires involved later tried to rescind their resignations; in the end, 22 were accepted and minor league umpires were hired to replace them to start the 2000 season.

When Reynolds got the call, he was in no mood to celebrate. “It was a very, very tough situation for the families of the major league umpires who had spent a ton of time, had 20, 25 years, 30 years in the big leagues and were losing their jobs,” he said.
Reynolds said no one in the MLUA tried to dissuade him from accepting the promotion.

“We (the 22 newly hired umpires) were encouraged by the union to take the jobs,” he said. “There were some people who believed that we (shouldn’t); there were some people who believed that we were scabs.

“To be honest with you, I never envisioned the day I got hired in the big leagues wasn’t going to be a day of celebration. Spending the day on the phone with my mother crying about whether I should take the job or not was not how I envisioned my day going after I got the phone call that I was hired by the American League.

“There were a lot of things going on for a lot of people, but my journey is, I never got a chance to celebrate being hired in my lifelong job. And that’s one of the biggest regrets I have. But again, it wasn’t a time for celebration for anybody.”

Reynolds said there was some resentment at first from some of his new colleagues. “But that was emotional,” he said. “Everybody was going through a tough time.”

To compound the situation further, Reynolds’ parents had gotten divorced while he was working at the Double-A level, and he and his father were estranged. They did not speak for 15 years, but eventually reconciled.

Iassogna, who worked his first MLB game as a Triple-A call-up in August of that year, called the situation “an open wound.”
“There were people whose lives changed. They lost their jobs,” he said. “And some of those people are Jimmy and my closest friends right now. (The union action) happened. I’m glad it’s over.”
Reynolds made his AL debut on the evening of June 4 at Fenway Park in Boston, where he had watched games growing up. He worked third base with a crew that included Larry McCoy, Tim Tschida and the late Chuck Meriwether.

“Marty Springstead was that kind of person,” Reynolds said. “My first game could have been anywhere, but when he had the opportunity to make it in my backyard … he recognized how important that could be to us, to our family, and so my (three) sisters and my mom came out.”

The following season, the umpiring staffs of the two major leagues merged into one. As a newcomer, Reynolds found himself being continually challenged. “It took about five years for them to believe anything I did,” he said. “It took about five years on a pitch right down the middle for somebody not to yell at me. From the day I walked on the field to about my sixth year in the big leagues is all a blur.”

Iassogna, who reached the majors for good in 2004, notes that during that period MLB was adopting a new umpiring philosophy.
“When we came up, we were on the tail end of ‘umpiring is an art form,’” he said. “There’s different interpretations for different umpires. Different guys have different strike zones. Everything was, ‘Can you talk to this guy? Are you approachable, but do you still run your game? Are you willing to stand up to a dugout or stand up to a superstar that’s yelling at you?’ That’s how we were evaluated.

“Now, it’s shifted to so much more of a science. The players will check after the game and they’ll get the information from Pitch Track or whatever and they’ll say, ‘That guy was right. That pitch was a quarter of an inch outside.’”

The learning experience extended off the field.
“You’re learning to navigate the senior guys,” Reynolds said.

“You’re learning how to travel as a big leaguer. You’re learning how to deal with more money than you ever had; we made I think $3,000 a month for six months (in Triple-A) to making $70,000 a year, so there’s a lot to learn.”

Early on, Reynolds learned from his veteran partners.
“I was blessed enough to work with John Hirschbeck and Tim Welke, and Mark Hirschbeck early in my career,” he said. “They (cared about) my development and they provided feedback and I was more than willing to learn and listen.

“I was one that needed all the help I could get and took all the help I could get. You want to be credible with your peers first; that (involves) asking questions about handling situations. What could I have done better?”

Reynolds stressed the importance of a strong work ethic and being willing to acknowledge mistakes.

“It’s about working your ass off,” he said. “You have to be right, you have to be good and you have to learn how to manage people, and you have to learn how to talk to people.

“Certainly I’ve never been somebody that is going to back down from a fight, but I’m also willing to say, ‘Yeah, I screwed that up,’ too. … You don’t use it as a crutch, but when I missed a pitch or when I missed a play I was more than willing to have that conversation the following day with somebody and I think that helps your reputation on the field.”

Reynolds worked the All-Star game in 2004, made his postseason debut the following year, and worked his first LCS in 2010. In 2014, he was assigned his first World Series between Kansas City and San Francisco. He had the plate for game three at AT&T Park (now Oracle Park) in San Francisco.

“I remember putting the ball in play and thinking, ‘Can you believe they put me in charge of this game?’” Reynolds said. “Then, there was the part of me that was the competitor.

“What I liken it to is Sunday at the Masters. This was our major, our biggest major. Does your swing hold up? Can your swing hold up when it really, really, matters?”

Reynolds worked his second World Series in 2018, matching his former dorm mate’s two as Iassogna worked in 2012 and 2017.

In 2020, both were named crew chiefs on the same day, a prelude to perhaps the most unique season in MLB history.

“For the two of us to be named crew chiefs on the same day was an honor,” Reynolds said. “To be recognized by (MLB), but also both of us at the same time.

“The season was the season; it was ballpark, hotel, grind, in that regard. Everything was new. The protocols, the not working with any fans, the ability to hear everything that comes out of the dugout all the time, learning what to ignore and what to address, and really, the unknown of the safety factor too.

“Teams were testing positive, we were having games canceled. Were we going to be affected? The strain that has on your family, not being able to go home like we would normally go home.”

The 2021 campaign marks Reynolds’ 22nd full MLB season. He admits his perspective on umpiring has changed with the passage of time.

“Honestly, every pitch, every play, is work for me,” he said. “I think slowly the last couple years the game has slowed down a little bit.

“I’m not the same umpire I was 15 years ago. My reaction time is the same, but I think with experience comes the ability to slow things down a little bit and be OK with the fact that I’m not the same level of umpire I used to be. I think I bring other attributes to the table now that I didn’t seven or eight years ago. I think experience does that.

“When you’re young, you have the ability to zoom in on whatever your task is, right then and there. And the older you get and the more experience you get and the better that you get, your ability to zoom back out from what your responsibility is, to the whole picture, is what separates umpires I think. I think that’s the thing that allows you to get better and better at this job.”

Reynolds also stressed the importance of maintaining a professional attitude toward the players and managers with whom he works.

“Certainly having familiarity with the people we’re dealing with (is beneficial) and having positive relationships with those people,” he said. “I don’t mean ass-kissing relationships. I mean honest and frank relationships.”

Reynolds is quick to laud his wife, Deanna, for her support. They met in 1998 when Reynolds was working the Arizona Fall League in Phoenix and Deanna was tending bar.

“All the guys would come into this particular bar,” Deanna says, “and the rest is history.”

It was Iassogna who persuaded his friend to ask Deanna for a date. The couple maintained a long-distance relationship until Jim moved to Arizona in 2004. They’ve been married 13 years and have a son, James N. Reynolds V, who is now 11.

“I recognized right away, when we started dating, he had the utmost integrity on whatever he does,” Deanna said. “I saw how he was with his family, his mother and his sisters, how he treated his co-workers, how he treated his friends, and seeing that commitment that he had in all aspects of his life definitely gave me reassurance coming into this relationship. Knowing that there was going to be long periods of time apart, to feel more confident that as long as I’m as committed as he’s committed, we can make it work.”

“My wife and I believe in the institution of marriage,” Reynolds said, “and we’ve worked very hard at it.

“None of it’s easy, especially the stress of this job and the stress of being away from the family, but without Deanna and without James, it wouldn’t be worth it. None of it would be worth it. It’s that simple for me. I get tremendous support from her. I get a lot of support and understanding from my son.”

The 52-year-old Reynolds isn’t sure how much longer he’ll continue to work.

“When this contract is up in four years, I’ll take a serious look at it,” he said. “In four years, my son is going to be 14 or 15 and we’ve missed too much. I’m away from my wife and son too much. I missed him growing up too much and I’d like to help her raise him more.

“I enjoy my job. My job is different every day and I love the challenge of it, but I think I’m going to have more of an impact being at home than I will out on the field.”

The post Chance Encounters of the Life-Changing Kind appeared first on Referee.com.

Yes, perhaps the finest college football official working today is built with the physique that would put a bouncer to shame, so we’ll deal with his ultra-masculine side as a start and then move on to reinforce the identity that should truly define Michael Vincent Defee.

The bottom line is this: Defee is to college football officials what Ed Hochuli is to the NFL in terms of being buff. But the man, and not his muscles, is what should really dominate any conversation about him.

So, first things first. This dude indeed has a macho side that his pipes suggest. Taught to box during his youth in Nederland, Texas, by his father, a former Golden Gloves champion, Defee fearlessly took on kids who sometimes outweighed him by 50 pounds. And yet he held his own in a ring so well that he regrets putting down his gloves to this day.

There was that time he saw a bully knock the books out of some poor kid’s hands in a corridor of Nederland High School in the late 1970s.

Bad move, bully.

Defee followed him for a spell before taking a flying leap at the punk and slamming his head into his locker door.

“I wanted to make sure he knew what it was like to be taken advantage of,” Defee said.

This is a man who bow hunts in his leisure time and was downright John-Wayne macho without a script that August day in 2016 when Defee, a licensed pilot, found himself enveloped by ominous thickening clouds in Texas skies while flying home from a scrimmage at Iowa State.

With the possibility of spatial disorientation causing him to helplessly turn his Cessna TTX 240 into a graveyard spiral, a fate that doomed John F. Kennedy Jr. some years ago, Defee instead forced himself to rely on instruments — something he was not yet qualified to do — to safely descend out of the murk.

He ended up landing in Nacogdoches, Texas, 100 miles north of his intended destination of Beaumont, before finally catching his breath and realizing how he had miraculously evaded a premature demise.

“That’s when the nerves took over and I vowed never to get myself in that situation again,” he said.

As for those pipes that stretch the fabric of his official’s uniform on television screens during autumn Saturdays as he works another Big 12 Conference assignment, they come with the price of a substantial commitment.

Even with Defee beyond his 56th birthday, this man dedicates himself to a conditioning regimen that elevates him into a social media sensation. It started when he was a half-hearted participant as a young man who reluctantly joined his father, also named Mike, at a local gym for weightlifting, but it would evolve into a lifelong passion.

“I get to the gym from a weightlifting standpoint ideally four days a week,” Defee said. “I started lifting when I was about 23 and I’ve been a gym rat ever since — and that was before I started officiating. My dad was big into the gym. I got that from him. I’ve been in the gym for 30-plus years now and, particularly as I get older, it’s insurance health-wise. I want to stay in as good of condition as I can.”

Physical Impressions Count

He’s done that to such an extent that the man has become a celebrity not so much because of how masterfully he handles himself on a football field — a reputation that should truly define him — but for how physically impressive he looks within those venues.

“I’ve been around Mike for a long time and he’s always had the big guns,” said Joe Blubaugh, who completed his third season as Defee’s field judge during the 2017 season. “We go to games and it’s just amazing how much can happen on social media when you’re in the right place at the right time or the wrong place at the wrong time and things can just kind of escalate. What’s crazy is whenever we go down on the field, especially for teams we haven’t done before, you can hear the players kind of give him the business for how big his arms are. They’re really that big. His arms are bigger than most of the players out there.”

Call him a chip off the old block. Defee’s father still lifts weights to this day. And even in his early 70s, the elder Mike Defee is not afraid to mix it up when he feels his family name has been disrespected. That was apparent the day he witnessed some fan verbally abusing his son while the younger Mike Defee was working a Thanksgiving night game in 2012 between Texas and Texas Christian University at Texas Memorial Stadium.

“I had a tough call against Texas around the 30 yardline and his ticket was in that general vicinity,” the younger Defee said of his father. “There was a guy who was really cussing me. I would tell my wife and daughters, ‘You’re going to hear some ugly things — just ignore it.’ I had failed to give my dad that speech and my dad is a man. He was a Golden Gloves champion boxer.

“This guy was really giving me the business in the stands about four rows above him. My dad jumped up and told him, ‘Let me tell you something! That’s my son you’re talking to! If anybody’s going to say that to him, it’s going to be me! It’s not going to be you!’ That guy pops off and my dad gets out of his chair and goes up. That guy says, ‘How old are you?’ And my dad said, ‘Old enough to whip your ass!’

“After the game, security brings my dad back to my locker room and they tell me the story. And I thought, ‘Oh my God, I can only imagine this on ESPN — ‘Referee’s father in fight in stands!’”

Quite simply, the elder Defee is not going to stand for anyone slighting the son he raised to be exceptional. Divorced in late 1969, he used plenty of tough love to raise his son with the ultimate goal of making him the man he is today. The younger Defee was christened with the middle name Vincent because Big Mike thought it was reminiscent of “Invincible.”

And that’s what he is.

Despite a late start in football officiating — the younger Defee was 33 when he worked his first high school game in 1995 —  Defee was in the Big 12 Conference as a back judge by 2006 and promoted to referee in 2010. He has been assigned to three national championship games, two as an alternate, and has worked every major bowl game except the Orange Bowl.

Yet as established as Defee is, football officiating represents just three percent of his income. Once a journeyman electrician by trade, Defee climbed a corporate ladder and is now president and general manager of Newtron Holdings, and oversees the operations of four companies in Nederland. There are about 800 employees under his watch.

He met his wife, Mary, in the fall of 1978 while both were working at an area Dairy Queen. They would become the proud parents of son Michael, a football official in the Southland Conference, and daughters Jennifer and Kate. But that’s not all. “We have five granddaughters that we try to spoil as much as we can,” Defee said.

Yes, Defee appears invincible, and to this day, the elder Mike still addresses his highly regarded son as Vincent, not Mike.

“I think that’s him,” said the elder Mike Defee, who is still a technical director and coach in the Brookeland School District in Texas. “I don’t know if he ever realized what the name meant. ‘Invincible’ is what that means. I picked that because that is what I wanted him to be and he’s lived up to it. Every inch of it. He exceeded all my expectations — beyond anything I ever imagined.”

The Man — Not the Muscles

That’s what brings us to the most substantial aspect of Defee: the man, not his muscles. It was hardly a Brady Bunch upbringing for little Mike. His parents had a rocky relationship and he and his little sister, Renee, endured their mother and father separating on two occasions before they ultimately divorced (his mom Marlene died of cancer in 2001).

Little Mike would go on to live with his paternal grandparents, Luke and Willie Mae, when he was 15 in 1975, an experience he remembers as deeply enriching.

“My grandparents had a huge impact on my life as both of my parents were working,” Defee said.

But the elder Mike remained an enormous presence during his son’s upbringing and they spent a great deal of their time together fortifying that invincible middle name within the boy’s consciousness. Whether it was boxing or playing an impromptu two-man football game in which little Mike would struggle, usually in vain, to get past Mike and score a touchdown, the kid was frequently getting pushed to his limits.

“I wanted to instill in him the competiveness that I didn’t discover in myself until I was probably a junior in high school,” the elder Defee said. “That’s what I wanted him to have. I let him win a little, but oh, he’d get mad!

“We had a place in my mother’s house and it was a small room that had a hardwood floor and there was a seam we used as a goalline. He had a little plastic helmet I bought him and he’d have the football and try to score. He’d push and push and push and he’d get so frustrated that he’d just go in the back room. Steam would be coming out of his ears. I would look at him, he would look at me and we’d go right back out there. I would let him score, but I would make him work for it.”

That will defines Defee as an elite college football referee. But there’s something else in that dynamic. The man is a perfectionist. He demands that of himself and he demands that of his crew. It can get loud and emotional in that crew, but Defee’s sole purpose is to deliver the best game his crew can possibly officiate. His attention to detail was apparent even when Defee was not making a name for himself in a striped shirt.

“We did a lot of things like scuba diving together,” said Mitch Myers, one of Defee’s closest high school friends. “He was pretty methodical with his preparation to go diving. He had all the equipment there in proper working order and there were no surprises when we actually got out to the dive site.”

A burning desire to succeed. A commitment to excellence. An attention to detail. It’s no wonder Defee rapidly ascended the ranks of football officiating despite his late start. There was a time when he was considered a hot commodity to advance to the NFL, a promotion Defee would have welcomed, but that’s probably no longer realistic given his advancing years.

Still, NFL referee Walt Anderson, who doubles as coordinator of officials for the Big 12 Conference, can’t help but wonder what kind of career Defee might have had among the best of the best.

“Mike Defee is the best all-around official that I’ve ever had the pleasure of knowing,” Anderson flatly declared. “First and foremost, he has that natural sense of leadership and, to me, that’s so important in a referee role. I think he would have been better than me, just because I believe he has the right attitude, the right approach and he understands what the commitment of time is to be really good as an official at that level and is willing to do that.

“There really aren’t that many people willing to put in that kind of time and dedication. And he has the ability to break down video and recognize and see things that other people not only scan over, it’s invisible to them.”

It was with that mentality that Defee ascended from a high school official from 1994-2005, to the Southland Conference (2001-05) and finally to the vaunted Big 12 Conference in 2006.

Family Pride

Family pride runs deep here.

“I have so many memories over the years, but there is one that stands out in my mind,” wrote his 96-year old grandmother Willie Mae Defee in a recent email. “It was how excited he was when he called to let me know he was selected as a referee for the Big 12. As far as grandsons go, he is one of the most thoughtful. He calls and checks on me almost every single day.”

That’s the attention Defee devotes to officiating. Anyone who works on his crew is probably going to get hollered at eventually in the heat of the battle, but nothing is ever personal. Crewmates including umpire Robert Richeson and Blubaugh understand that and hold their leader in the highest regard because they know how focused and driven he is. Defee makes it clear what he expects and the results are usually a superlatively officiated game.

Defee said, “(It’s like this) ‘Look, I’m going to make a deal with you. I’m not going to allow you to hurt my feelings out there. I want you to be honest with me. If you have something to say, say it.’

“Someone who continues to be a mentor to me is a guy named Randy Christal, who was a legend as a football referee. He said, ‘Don’t say anything on concrete that you wouldn’t say on grass.’ Basically, what he’s saying is, ‘If you have anything to bring to the table, if you think we’re screwing anything up, get your ass in there and say something.’

“I want you to say something right now or forever hold your peace because the worst thing you can do is walk into my locker room at halftime or after the game and make the statement, ‘I think we screwed that up.’ That happened about eight or nine years ago in a Southland game. I had a kid with me who wasn’t part of my crew.

“He walked into my locker room at halftime and said, ‘I think we screwed that up.’ And I lit him up! You’re never going to get your butt chewed for bringing information. You may be wrong, but I’d rather you be wrong than not be willing to come in there because there will be times when you save us as a crew because you have information we’re missing.”

Defee has learned from experience like any other official and what happened on Nov. 18, 2006, drives an already intensively motivated man to an even greater degree. Texas Tech was hosting Oklahoma State at Lubbock and Defee was serving as back judge after what he considered to be a personally successful first year in the Big 12. There were less than two minutes to play and Oklahoma State, trailing, 30-24, was preparing to receive a punt.

“When the kid punts the ball, it’s real wobbly and it’s into the wind, so the punt receiver has to sprint to the ball and he gives the fair catch signal,” Defee said. “He gets ahead of me and he’s already given the fair catch signal, so I’m obligated to protect him and he can’t advance the ball.

“He’s sprinting up to the football and he, what I thought, catches the ball, and I hammer the whistle trying to shut the play down. And the ball was actually between his legs and hitting the ground. There’s a scramble, but I’ve already hit the whistle, so I had an inadvertent whistle.

“Oklahoma State ended up recovering the ball around midfield, but the rules required that the ball be re-kicked. It was a very, very embarrassing situation and I had to report it to my referee and he had to go over to explain to Mike Gundy, the coach at Oklahoma State, what had happened. I went over there, too, because whatever the coach had to say, I wanted him to say it to me because I was the one who did it.”

All Gundy wanted was for time to be put back on the clock, a request that couldn’t be granted per the rules. Texas Tech followed with a deep punt, which Defee said ended up costing Oklahoma State 15 yards of field position. A late rally fell short and, as Defee reflects, “Had I not had the inadvertent whistle and they got the ball at midfield, would the outcome have been different?”

He had the entire offseason to reflect on that.

“That happened in November and that’s like having a terrible taste in your mouth and you have to live with it until September the following year,” he said. “That was a long nine months to prepare for the next season and I worked extremely hard. I re-doubled my efforts and I’ve had a remarkable career. Knock on wood, I haven’t had another one of those.”

And no, Defee will likely never make it to the NFL, but he’s at peace with that.

“They won’t tell you this, but they really don’t want to hire people over 50,” he said.

But what matters is that Defee has emerged as a star in college football and it wasn’t because of his muscular arms.

“I just can’t tell you how much I appreciate working with him,” Richeson said. “He’s just one of those guys who is very driven, takes what he does very seriously and is absolutely a great leader. I’ve had a great run and I owe him a ton for that success because he’s taught me how to really work hard at a craft that’s not an easy thing to do.

“He’s given me a lot of advice and tools to make me improve as an official.”

Tom Quick, an umpire in the Southeastern Conference, reacted with humor when told this story was in the works.

“I’m so sorry,” he said with a laugh when informed that the subject was Defee. But levity quickly made way for enormous respect. “He is one of the very few officials in the country who expects and demands the highest level of performance from each and every member of his crew,” Quick said. “Beyond all the muscles and stuff, he is one of the best crewmates, period.”

Christal, who worked for 23 years as an official in the Southland and Big 12 conferences, perhaps paid Defee the greatest compliment.

“I’m probably not supposed to say this, but I’ll say it anyway,” he said. “I have been a scout in the NFL for the last three years and I have told them that he is the No. 1 referee in the country — bar none. He’s a tremendous referee, he’s built like Adonis and he’s just so professional.”

As impressive as those muscles are, the man is so much more impressive.

“In respect to football officiating, he expects more out of himself than he does from anyone else — just as any great leader does. And as a man, if I called him today and said, ‘I need your help,’ there’s nothing he wouldn’t do to help as a man,” Quick said.

”I’ve got a son at Texas A&M and if I told Mike he wrecked his car and asked if he could help, he would leave Beaumont, Texas, and drive to College Station. (Defee) is a better person than a football official. And I think the country recognizes how good a football official he is.”

The post Muscles and Details Lead to Mike Defee’s Mastery appeared first on Referee.com.

In a paraphrase of something a fellow official recently told him: “He has changed the narrative.”

Peter Tao, supervisor of officials for the AFOA, wouldn’t have expected anything else from Watts.

“Robert has handled things great,” Tao said. “I saw him when he was recovering. It was quite an ordeal he went through, but at the end of the day, he’s an official. He loves football and officiating and he was going to find a way back. There was never any doubt in my mind. It was just a matter of when.”

Tao referred to this:Watts served as the umpire when he was made the subject of a vicious, blindside targeting attack by two players in what was a chippy, physical September 2015 game at Marble Falls, Texas.. The video of that double hit went viral nationally and resulted in players being suspended and a coach being found guilty of assault for ordering the hit.

Watts was subjected to the hit because he was wrongly accused of using racial slurs toward the offending team. He has repeatedly and publicly denied ever doing so. The hit caused a traumatic brain injury and other health issues.

Four years later, Watts is still dealing with some residual issues related to the injury along with the fact that the matter is still not closed legally, as some aspects of the incident continue to be litigated. He has a lawsuit against some of the plaintiffs, awaiting trial in the United States District Court for the Western Division of Texas.

Despite all that, the 36-year-old Watts, an 18-year veteran of the stripes, now considers himself an active and energized official again. Someone who still firmly believes in his avocation, who wants to “give fresh ideas to our association and find ways we can improve.”

Running for president of the AFOA was central to that belief as he is out to bring the association into the 21st century, especially in how it deals with retention, recruiting and sportsmanship.

“I was out the remainder of 2015 and slowly got back into it. I wanted to become more active again,” he said of the aftermath, noting that people were very kind and patient with him. “(It’s just that) we’ve always needed help recruiting. We had an on-staff recruiter for us who did it for about a decade.

“He helped us gain more new officials, but we realized we needed more help from the board (of directors) and the membership if we were to succeed. We followed the ‘Say Yes (to Officiating)’ campaign (that NASO started in 2018) closely because we realized our average age was getting older (late 40s to early 50s).

“We knew that not all of our members were active on social media. In fact, we have some very good people who want nothing to do with social media, but we realized that’s why we needed to do it (if we wanted to reach younger officials).”

AFOA Executive Secretary Wayne Elliott reports that the chapter gets about 45-50 new recruits every year.

“But the problem is,” he said, “we don’t often get them to that second or third year.”
Watts and the AFOA went ahead and started up a Facebook page in January and according to Watts, the results have been stunning.

“In one month, we had something like 2,000 views on it,” he said. “We’re also on Instagram too. We know we’re about 10-15 years behind the curve on social media, and this kind of idea is a big ‘risk-reward’ kind of thing. But if we don’t try it, we won’t get anywhere.”

The AFOA also started a “You Can Ref” campaign on social media and is using YouTube to some effect.

Watts is well aware of the potential pitfalls of social media, of the trollers who come to such sites just to criticize officials.

“We’re just getting started; this is a new frontier for us,” he said. “I’m hoping everyone embraces my joke that if someone berates us we should just tell them, ‘If you don’t like it the way it is now, come out and help us (and become an official).’”

The group has about 375 members (with hopes of getting to more than 400 by fall) and serves more than 90 Austin area schools (as opposed to about 40 or so about 40 years ago), and the buy-in to the program is starting to gain momentum. As of March 2019, close to 120 members were active on the Facebook page. That number far exceeded Watts’ early expectations.

Watts noted that to help get buy-in, the Facebook page has both a public and a private component. The latter is a closed section where AFOA members can exchange questions and ideas and eventually post videos.

“We’re hoping we can get our membership on the move,” Watts said. “It’s a better buy-in than we thought so far. We’re also looking to work with other groups and other sports, and pool our resources. Football in Texas is a year-round thing. Spring scrimmages, summer clinics. We begin training our new officials in July with our preseason meetings in August.”

Tao, a 35-plus-year veteran prep and collegiate (Sun Belt Conference) official, is one of those who has bought into Watts’ initiative.

“I think it has gotten off to an awesome start,” he said. “We do a pretty good job of getting people into meetings and starting them out, though retention is an issue. But I’ve held two training meetings this spring, one for the refs and another for the wings and peripherals, and in one I had over 130 people and the other I had over 100, which was great.”

Watts, who never held office in the AFOA before, has other ideas too.

He wants to tie in recruiting efforts around events like the Super Bowl, NCAA signing day and the NFL draft. He would also like to work with NFL officiating analyst Mike Pereira’s “Battlefields to Ballfields” campaign that works closely with veterans.

“We’ll work with all kinds of people,” he said. “We’re trying to attack this from all angles.”

He has other hooks in mind, too.

“The striped shirt (officials wear) is what everybody knows as our profile,” he said. “We’ve built a campaign around (the idea) ‘Do you have what it takes to wear this shirt?’

“We’ve budgeted more money for recruiting and retention. It is our No. 1 issue.”

Tao is realistic but hopeful.

“We are still not doing enough to catch the 20-year-olds,” he said. “I started at 23 right out of school, but the ones that we’re seeing start out now are in their late 20s and early 30s. We’re not quite there with the millennials yet.

“But Robert (Watts) is a natural leader. People think a lot of him. He ran against six other people (for president) and that he’s willing to do this after all he’s been through speaks a lot about him.”

The amount of energy that Watts is willing to put into making the AFOA better helps him maintain balance and perspective.

It also keeps him from dwelling on that evening in September 2015.

“People bring it up; it happens,” he said. “At work and at social functions. It’s been close to four years and I’m still working through some things. My biggest worry now is someone thinking that they might want to officiate and they hear (my) story and that would deter them.”

Watts’ dedication to officiating, even after what he went through, is something special, Elliott said.

“He’s a strong Christian man,” Elliott said, “and he never went away. Even when his lawyers were telling him not to be on the field, he was still at meetings. He was never fazed.

“It’s a love for the job (officiating) for him, for me, for anyone who stays in it as long as we do. It’s the greatest thing we do.”

And Watts doesn’t intend to stop anytime soon.

“I know an official in Fort Worth,” he said, “and he told me a great thing: ‘We’ve got to change the narrative. This is such a great job. It creates such great bonds.’ And he’s right. Doing this (with the AFOA) has allowed me to move on and not dwell on it. That I can do other things and still officiate.

“People ask me, ‘Why are you still officiating?’ and I tell them, ‘I wouldn’t let that (hit) change what I do.’”
There’s something else that’s also driving Watts.

“My son wasn’t quite two months old when it (the hit) happened to me,” he said, “and I want sportsmanship to be at the forefront of what we do. I see the demeanor of people and it’s not healthy. I hope in 20 years or so, if he’s still playing or officiating, that things are better.”

The post Back From The Blindside appeared first on Referee.com.

Brad Moran, director of the NASCAR Touring Series at the time, told Thalheimer in 2016 that he came across his résumé and wanted to bring him into the NASCAR K&N Pro Series West (now the ARCA West series), or what Thalheimer compares to Class A baseball. On

Thalheimer’s résumé, his officiating included work at several short tracks, including those in Irwindale, Calif., and Kansas City, Kan. He would eventually be offered a full-time role with NASCAR — working the three major series, including the NASCAR Cup Series. Thalheimer, 32, made the decision to make a dramatic left turn — handing in his white hat for a protective helmet and a full-time job with NASCAR. Though he had to sacrifice working varsity football, he still works sub-varsity games during the week in Overland Park, Kan., where he lives on his off days.

The decision to move full speed ahead came in June 2019 when Thalheimer was offered the chance to work his first Cup Series (major league tier) race at Pocono Raceway in Long Pond, Pa.

“That was the equivalent of a high school official getting called and saying, ‘Hey, do you want to come work an NFL game this week?’” Thalheimer said. “At the same time, I had been made aware NASCAR was looking to hire another official full time, and I decided to apply.”

Jon Hoover is also juggling auto racing and football officiating. Between working high school football and college football in the Old Dominion Athletic Conference (ODAC) and USA South — two NCAA Division III football conferences — mixed in with work as a starter and corner marshal for multiple racing series, Hoover keeps pretty busy. In the winter, he works sub-varsity basketball for a change of pace.

After working a few years of high school football in Virginia, Hoover got the urge to apply to college conferences. While he was being recruited for a full-time job outside of officiating, a prospective employer picked up his résumé and noticed he was a high school football official.

“(The prospective employer) said, ‘Well, I see you’ve been doing this for a few years. Have you ever thought about applying to the ODAC or USA South?’” Hoover said. “I said, ‘Yeah, as a matter of fact I want to, but I don’t know how to do it.’ The potential employer, a college football official himself, said, ‘Well, let me tell you how.’’

While Hoover was not hired in his first year applying to the college conferences, he was connected with someone who assigned JV college games and was picked up the following year.

Hoover’s duties as a starter include having all eyes on him at the beginning of the race as he waves the green flag. He also waves a checkered flag at the end of the race, along with a few others in between. He must keep up with the race and is responsible for knowing who’s in the lead. Despite a digital readout system that tracks every time a car gets to the start/finish line, technology can fail, and Hoover said that while rare, it has happened.

“I usually keep up with at least the top three, if not the top five depending on how many cars are out there,” he said. “I have to know who’s in the lead.”

He’s also a main contact for the control tower as the eyes and ears for the track. That ties into his assignments as a control marshal, where he’ll be on the ground keeping track of a sector, or a part of the track.

Thalheimer has to be ready for anything as NASCAR officials work at multiple positions on the track throughout the season. As many as 25 to 30 officials work an average race weekend. Skills needed include technical know-how of doing full car inspections — including height and weight, working on the spotter stand to relay information from spotters to the control tower or even running a light to pit road where rules will indicate if it’s open or closed.

“You’ve got to be able to absorb a lot of stuff in the rulebook because one of the things about the NASCAR rulebook is when it comes to inspecting racecars, it’s very technical,” Thalheimer said. “One of the things about NASCAR when you’re inspecting a car is if you see something that you’re not 100 percent sure is against the rules, instead of making a ruling you can ask one of your fellow officials or you can call the technical director over and ask him to look at it, which is what we’re encouraged to do.”

Thalheimer and Hoover have had to make tough choices on what to prioritize during the overlapping seasons of fall football and the extended auto racing seasons, which can run from February through November depending on the region.

Hoover said he’s made it clear football is his priority while Thalheimer has chosen the different path of getting picked up full time, at the expense of sacrificing a majority of his football schedule.

“It’s still a little cool for racing in the spring early in March when spring football is going on,” Hoover said. “By the time spring football is over, racing is just starting to heat up. Where it gets tough is late August because there are some high-profile events that I work in late August that conflict with the start of high school football, so I have to really manage that.

“But this year because of COVID and obviously losing all of our football season, I got to work an event this year that I would never have been able to work in the past.”
On July 15, the Virginia High School League had postponed the start of football games to mid-February.

The post Yellow Flags to Checkered appeared first on Referee.com.

It’s May 20, 2000, at Staples Center in Los Angeles. The Lakers are hosting the Portland Trail Blazers in the first game of the NBA Western Conference Finals. Rasheed Wallace is losing it. Nothing new there. Ron Garretson isn’t having it. Nothing new there, either.
Wallace, the Trail Blazers’ high-maintenance forward, draws his second technical foul after glaring at Garretson in the third quarter, setting off the high-strung veteran official. “Whack! Get out!” Garretson shouts at the 6-foot-10 Wallace, who stands more than a foot taller than him. The Trail Blazers’ Steve Smith approaches Garretson to plead Wallace’s case and is instantly rebuffed. “Get away from me, Steve! Get away from me, Steve!” Garretson shouts. “I asked him three times to stop trying to intimidate me. I’m done! He’s gone!” Case closed.

This is just another night at the office for Garretson, who has a low tolerance level for taking crap from anyone. Just go out and play the damn game, like Charles Barkley, Steve Nash and Kyrie Irving, three of Garretson’s favorites. Garretson never backed down from anyone who didn’t.

And now it’s over. All the commotion Garretson routinely handled for 32 years as an undersized enforcer who demanded respect has quieted down with his 2019 retirement, and he is digging the solitude of the Gilbert, Ariz., home he shares with his wife, Julie. As he patiently answers questions for this story with his typically succinct style, the sound of barking dogs can occasionally be heard over the phone. Their names are Barkley, Nash and Kyrie. “On the court, they were decent guys,” Garretson said when asked why those names were chosen for his dogs. Yes, Garretson does place a premium on players he respected.

Life has become a joy for the 62-year-old Garretson during these sun-kissed Arizona days. There is so much contentment to be found simply by tuning in daily to “The Herd with Colin Cowherd.” And it just doesn’t get better than when 2-year-old granddaughter Beverly Rose wraps Grandpa Ron around her fingers during frequent visits. She might be the only one who has ever dared to try that. “She’s sassy, she’s smart and she’s just a joy,” Garretson said. “She’s just the neatest thing — to have her in our lives.”

What a pleasant departure his life has become. Through more than 1,900 career games in NBA arenas, which included more than 200 playoff games and 11 Finals assignments, Garretson walked with a swagger despite the enormous shadow of his famous late father, Darell, who is remembered by so many as the “Godfather of NBA officials.” And like his father, Ron helped cultivate officiating excellence for years to come with his Coast to Coast Referee School. His career came to an end soon after a 2019 DUI incident in Arizona, but Garretson said he’d had enough by that point. His body was barking at him and it was time to leave behind what he did so well for such a long time.

Whether Garretson eventually decides he has more to offer with his unique ability to instruct remains to be seen, but until further notice, let Barkley, Nash and Kyrie bark. Let Cowherd babble. And let Beverly Rose bounce gleefully on grandpa’s knee. After 32 years of airports, hotels and arenas, life has slowed from a gush to a trickle for Garretson, and that’s just fine with him. “I’m going to hang with my dogs in my house,” he answers when asked what his plans were for this day. And why not? This man has earned that leisure time.

“I had a great career,” Garretson said. “To be able to do something that you loved for so long and do it at a very, very high level for as long as I did, I’m extremely proud of that. I wouldn’t trade that for anything.”

This man has earned this legacy, not that he’s surprised. Hell, he expected this. One day while Garretson was working his way toward becoming an NBA official in the 1980s, he made a bold proclamation to his already esteemed father. “I told him point blank, ‘I want to be better than you.’ I’ll never forget. He looked at me — this is a guy who’s in the Hall of Fame — and he said, ‘Well, I’m pretty good.’” No arguments there.

But Ron developed an edge from an early age after never backing down from challenges against his older, taller and athletically superior brother, Rick, while growing up in Westminster, Calif. Dealing with everything his brother dished out during competition back in the 1960s, the 5-foot-8 Ron became an exceptional athlete himself at state power Servite High School, an all-boys private school of about 800 students in Anaheim, Calif. After attending San Diego State, Ron went on to operate two Second Sole Athletic Shoes franchises with Darell and Rick in Arizona from 1981 until 1986. Ron broke into the NBA in 1987, married Julie and helped raise two children — daughter Nicole, 31, and son Jason, 29.

All of this was enough to impress Darell, a tough, stern, taciturn perfectionist, who handed out compliments seemingly with the frequency of Halley’s Comet being visible from Earth. The magnitude of any compliment from this man was enhanced by how infrequently one came along, but one day in 1998, when he retired as the NBA’s head of officials, Darell sat down and penned a letter to his son that Ron cherishes to this day.
“It was a letter telling me how proud he is not just of my refereeing, but me as a husband and father,” said Garretson, who declined to reveal that letter’s exact contents. “That meant all the world to me. It was your dad taking the time to write you a letter and it reinforced that you were doing something right, something positive.”

‘Major Influence’

There are so many more who fortify Darell’s thoughts about his son.
“When I was first starting out, (Ron) was an individual I picked out and I imitated everything he did,” NBA official Billy Kennedy said. “He was a major influence on me becoming an NBA referee. He had an influence and his father had an influence on my career. With that being said, he is probably one of the most underrated individuals as far as teaching is concerned. Most of the referees in the NBA at some point in time came through the Coast to Coast Referee School.

“When he established that school, it gave an opportunity for individuals to learn how to referee. And it didn’t matter what level they were at. He was willing to teach from a person who had never blown a whistle before to guys who were working Division I and Division II in college and aspiring NBA referees who wanted to further their careers. He has touched, I would say, probably between three and four thousand referees at some point in their careers.”

One of those officials is Andy Nagy, who is in his first season as a full-time NBA staff official. At 17, Nagy was too young to rent a car or a hotel room when he attended his first Coast to Coast camp in Las Vegas in 2008, so he was joined by family friends to make it happen. His youth didn’t matter to Garretson, who was just as attentive to Nagy as he was with the far more experienced officials in the camp.

“I loved everything about that camp and I loved the way Ron taught me,” Nagy said. “There was so much information that was thrown at me and it was a little overwhelming at times. Ron is a teacher at heart. He was very tough, but his heart is always in the right place. I knew it was tough love. It was very, very necessary at times. It was never, ‘Hey, you’ll get the next play. It’s OK.’ No. It was, ‘Hey, you need to do this, this is why and this is how you’re going to do it. Now, let’s fix it.’ Ron was huge on mechanics.”

Jason Garretson, a Division II official who works in the Big South, Colonial and Ohio Valley conferences, has a strong sense of his father’s presence while officiating.
“I always hear him in the back of my head saying, ‘Referee the defense, call the obvious, don’t guess, trust your partners, trust the system.’” Jason said. “That’s what he taught me and those things translate to any level — YMCA, high school, college and NBA.”

Growing Up

Ron Garretson was born July 1, 1958, in Compton, Calif., two years after Rick was born in nearby Long Beach. Darell and Jeanne Garretson raised their two boys in a single-level home at 10351 Nottingham Ave., in Westminster. Jeanne, who died in 2011, three years after her husband, was an assertive stay-at-home mom who kept her house in order during Darell’s extended absences while officiating. By night, Rick and Ron slept in a bunk bed before each boy got his own room when Darell and Jeanne built on to their house. By day, the two boys were constantly trying to get the best of each other in whatever sport was in season. Rick, who was the catcher on the Bolsa Little League team of Santa Ana that placed third in the 1968 Little League World Series and who started at wide receiver for San Diego State as a senior in 1978, always had the upper hand against Ron. “He never beat me,” Rick said.

Meanwhile, staying on the good side of their father was a shared goal between the brothers, who were certain to catch hell, and possibly some leather, if they strayed from the straight and narrow.

“He didn’t have a lot of patience, he was very disciplined, very strong-willed,” Ron said. “He was a terrific man, but if you did something and he called you out on it, you’d better come clean. He didn’t deal with BS very well or deal with people who beat around the bush. He was very succinct to your face and whatever he had to say, he said it and then he moved on. He was a boss the same way he was a parent.”

Of course, boys will be boys and that was the case one day when a basketball sailed through the sliding door of the new addition on the Garretsons’ house during a showdown between the two boys.

“I was playing with my brother in the back yard and there was a heated argument,” Ron said. “He threw the ball at me and I ducked and it went through the sliding glass window. My dad was on the road at the time, so it was the proverbial, ‘Wait until your father gets home!’ Those were the worst words you could hear back then. The times I thought I was going to get into the most trouble, the waiting period was the worst time until you had to deal with him face to face.

“We were brought up in the days where, when we did something really bad, there was a belt. Rick always had to go first and I had to watch him get whatever we were going to get. If it was bad enough where he had to step in, it was bare butt and belt. We probably got the belt for that because they had to go to the expense of replacing the sliding glass door.”

It wasn’t always pleasant being Ron as the underdog to Rick as he grew up. But in retrospect, those years helped shape him into who he would become because Ron was slowly developing the fiery disposition that defined him as a standout athlete at Servite and as an official who made his father proud.

“All we did was play against one another,” Garretson said. “We went from sport to sport. (Rick) was such a good athlete and I was the pesky little brother playing with him and his friends. We played baseball out in the front, basketball out in the back, football … that’s all we did. What ended up happening is when I ended up playing against kids my own age, it was easy because I was used to playing against someone like him, who was so talented. My competitiveness came from being up against him my whole life.”

Leadership Roots

By the time Garretson was a freshman at Servite in 1973, he had developed a commanding presence in the image of his father. Factoring into that is Darell and Jeanne held back Ron when he was in the sixth grade to give him another year to develop. “I was always older than the other kids, so it helped me a lot,” he said about his high school years. The dynamic had changed. Ron had grown up taking his whippings during competition from Rick and his friends, but he was suddenly the one in charge at Servite. He was no bully, but to question Garretson’s authority or talk trash to him at Servite was to risk instantly getting chewed up and spit out. No one got in the last word against Garretson.

“He wasn’t a cheerleader type, he was a mouthy type,” said Larry Toner, Garretson’s freshman football and basketball coach at Servite. “If you were an opposing player and said something to him, he would (figuratively) cut the legs out from underneath you. He was very clever with his mouth. If you got out of line, you heard it from Ron. He wouldn’t physically do anything to you, but he would just destroy you verbally. You didn’t want to get him amped. If you came in as an altar boy, that was your best bet against him. The minute you left that altar, you were in trouble.”

While Garretson was no Rick as an athlete, he was exceptional in his own way. Toner was asked by the varsity football coach at Servite to play someone else at quarterback because he favored a taller player at that position. But Toner still snuck the heady Garretson behind center when he could and recalls that Servite scored an average of once every seven snaps with him at quarterback. As a guard in basketball, Garretson was an assured ballhandler and scorer on a star-studded team. His teammates during the 1976-77 season — when Garretson was a senior — included Mike Witt, who went on to become the 11th player in major league history to pitch a perfect game while with the California Angels in 1984; Steve Buechele, an infielder in the major leagues from 1985-95; and Jon Weiglin, who was named Servite’s co-athlete of the year with Garretson in 1977.

“He was very much a leader,” said Witt, a junior center when Garretson was a senior. “He had the ball 99 percent of the time because he was the point guard and our whole philosophy was to get the rebound, get it in his hands and then he took charge. It was three-on-two, for the most part, the whole game. He knew how to dish and he could take a guy one-on-one, too. It was kind of his show my junior year and he did really well.”
Weiglin might have been Garretson’s equal in terms of athletic ability, but he did not hesitate to defer to the fiery point guard, who wore No. 12 (he wanted the No. 10 his father wore in officiating, but it wasn’t available) and loved to wear sweatbands.

“We were all Type A personalities and we just basically let Ron run the show,” Weiglin said. “Sometimes we all laughed about how Ron was just so demanding, but we all got along great. The games I remember most were against the basketball powerhouse Mater Dei (about 12 miles from Servite in Santa Ana). They’re a terrific basketball program and our senior year, we never lost to Mater Dei and Ron was the driving force between those two games, really. He would guide the team with his vocal ability and tell us what to do.

He would light it up, he would shoot, he would pass, he would just direct. We just deferred to him and for us to do that was pretty amazing.”

Officiating Footsteps

The officiating bug didn’t bite Garretson until he was out of college and working with Darell and Rick in the shoe business in Arizona. Darell had never pushed Ron to follow in his footsteps, but he was a driving force once his son expressed an interest.

“That’s when my dad started working with me,” Garretson said. “You find out very, very shortly whether you enjoy it or not because it’s such a negative profession with people screaming at you and telling you that you suck and you have to be able to deal with it. My brother couldn’t deal with it. He went a different way. He went into coaching.

“My dad worked with me for a year before I got seen by anybody. We would go down to the Salvation Army gym and he would tell me the things I needed to do to get better. And then in the summer of ’84, the Olympics was in L.A., they moved the summer training to San Diego State and that’s the first time I got in a camp. He brought me there as a non-staff guy, but I worked two games there and I sat in on meetings. That’s when I really, really got the bug.”

Within a year, Garretson was working in the Continental Basketball Association and then it was on to the NBA. It was a rapid ascent, but then Garretson had something other up-and-comers didn’t: the ultimate mentor.

Darell Garretson’s impact as an NBA official and supervisor earned him enshrinement in the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame. He was instrumental in starting the first union for NBA referees, developing the concept of “refereeing the defense,” implementing the three-person officiating crew and training new referees.

“I had the best teacher in the world,” Ron said. “There was nobody like him. If I had a game and I had let’s say 50 calls, he would go to the five that either I got wrong or I didn’t handle in the right way. That’s what we talked about. He was trying to fine-tune and tell me what I needed to do to improve.”

A 32-year legacy of his own followed, during which Ron Garretson developed a presence similar to his father both as an official and an instructor. There were numerous highs, such as all the Finals games, and there were the inevitable lows. One of his toughest nights was working “The Malice at the Palace,” on Nov. 19, 2004, at The Palace in Auburn Hills, Mich. A shoving match between the Detroit Pistons’ Ben Wallace and the Indiana Pacers’ Ron Artest escalated into a brawl that included fans.

“That was a black eye for the league,” Garretson said. “Whenever you have a fight, it’s always the referee’s fault. It’s always been that way. And this was a game that was basically over. Back then, we didn’t have replay and I was on the other side of the floor when the foul took place. It was actually scary because all hell had broken loose, I called the game and said it was over because there was basically a riot taking place on the floor.

“Would I have done anything differently? I probably could have been more aggressive in separation. Hindsight is always 20-20, but I probably could have done something different in that sense.”

Did that night cost Garretson in the long run? He doesn’t rule that out.

“I had been in the Finals for years by then,” he said. “I worked in the Finals that year, but after that year, I never worked the Finals again. To say that had something to do with it, I don’t know. There’s a lot of things that go your way and certain things that don’t go your way. You just have to accept it and say you did your best. And sometimes, your best isn’t good enough.”

Career Legacy

Garretson continued through the 2018-19 season, but by then, more than 30 seasons of running up and down hardwood floors had taken a toll on his body. He was dealing with neck and back pain and was using special pillows in hotels to deal with his discomfort. A brilliant career was drawing to a close. There was also that DUI incident, when Garretson crashed his Jeep Wrangler into a tree. He had a blood alcohol content of 0.19, more than twice the legal limit. “I just had enough,” he said. “My body was breaking down. It had been a good run. I had had an off-the-court incident that I don’t really want to go into, but I had a DUI during that offseason and it got a lot of publicity in a short term. But I was ready to come off the floor. I had just had enough.”

His legacy had long been secure at that point, as so many officials who worked with him can attest.

“At the very beginning, I think he probably refereed me,” said Leon Wood, a longtime NBA official who also had played in the NBA. “For a guy who didn’t have great size for a referee, he had a commanding presence about him. He was in great shape, he was very articulate and he was a hell of a player. He was a person who knew the game, having a referee for a father.”

NBA official Bill Spooner offered a twist. He admires Garretson for succeeding so much in the shadow of his legendary father.

“It’s a difficult position to be the son of a very dynamic, strong man who was the boss, also,” he said. “He was one of the guys, but he couldn’t exactly be one of the guys because his dad was the boss. But I always thought Ron handled it as well as it could be handled. There was no better teacher and no better judge of talent than his dad, Darell. Ron paid attention along the way — quite well.”

Said former NBA official Joe DeRosa: “Ron probably helped me as much as anybody, especially when I first started out, to guide me in the right direction and to be successful as an NBA referee. He had a great mentor in his father, which was obvious, but overall, Ron was always professional, he was always honest, he was always critical of himself and he was always striving to be the best he could possibly be.”

By the way, what would Darell think of his youngest son now that he has put away his whistle for good? Rick, who has led the Chandler High School football team in Arizona to the last two Division 1 state championships, didn’t hesitate to respond.

“He would be beside himself,” Rick said. “Refereeing All-Star games, refereeing Finals, being a true pro in how he handled himself throughout his career and of having camps and teaching referees, he had a tremendous ability like my dad did. I used to say that when my dad passed away, I got to watch him on NBA Classics. You know you’re starting to get old when, all of a sudden, Ron is on the NBA Classics! It’s a unique line and he would definitely be proud of how his kid developed in that profession. Going 32 years, that’s a lot of games, man.”

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was both excited and nervous as I took the field for my first high school
game in late summer 2014. It was my third year umpiring baseball. I had roughly 75 youth league baseball games under my belt, but moving to high school baseball – even if just a freshman game – seemed like a huge leap over those prior experiences.

I had wanted to work the bases to ease into this new level. My partner, who had helped train me through the local umpire association, insisted it would be the perfect opportunity to step behind the plate. I’d have someone experienced working with me, someone who could step in if there was any trouble, which he insisted there wouldn’t be. “You’re ready,” he said. “It won’t be much different from some of the good youth baseball you’ve seen.”

I was pretty nervous about jumping right on the plate for my first high school game, but I went with it. As I donned the plate gear in the parking lot, I took a lot of deep breaths to calm my nerves. Just before the first pitch, I took another deep breath before dropping into my stance. My heart was racing a mile a minute.

It took the first inning before I started to get comfortable. The game was close with both Oak Creek and Wauwatosa East playing competitively. We were cruising along. I was really enjoying my first taste of high school baseball.

When we reached the top of the fourth inning, that all changed.

The batter fouled off a pitch right into my mask. The ball hit me so hard, I almost fell. I remember everything kind of hazy. In fact, I remember the batter swinging, but I don’t remember him fouling it off. For a brief moment, I kept closing and opening my eyes. And I shook my head a little. One of the coaches asked if I was OK. I nodded and put my hand up like I was. And then I got right back behind the plate and got the game back under way.

I quickly realized something wasn’t right. I had a hard time focusing. I was struggling to see the ball clearly, and I called a few balls that should have been called strikes, but nothing so egregious that it called obvious attention to the situation.

I didn’t feel right. I actually felt nauseated. I didn’t say anything to my partner. He later said I didn’t give any outward indication of having issues. It was my first high school game – actually my only high school game that season – and I thought, “I’ve got to finish this.” I didn’t want to be “that guy.” So I struggled through. I arrived at the last out with a headache – never fully realizing the seriousness of the situation.

In a postgame review with my partner, I told him about having a headache and that after getting hit, it was hard to focus. He said I should have told him; we would have switched out. But I thought I was fine.

I remember driving home from the game and my head started pounding worse. I felt horrible. That night, my fiancée said I seemed confused. Her sister, who was a nurse and visiting at the time, said I should go to the doctor because I had probably suffered a concussion. My fiancée was so worried about me that she sat and watched me sleep that night. When I look back on it now, I should have taken things more seriously.

I went to the doctor the next day, and he confirmed I had suffered a concussion. He said I needed to rest for the next several weeks. No umpiring. That meant turning back games.

It took nearly two weeks before I started feeling halfway decent again. The experience made me think about umpiring. You hear about people getting concussions and if you get enough you can quickly have permanent damage. I started to question if I really wanted to do this.

I didn’t get back on the field for several weeks, finishing up a few youth games at the end of the season and I mostly worked the bases.

I didn’t take any additional games that season and I didn’t send in my renewal with the Wisconsin Interscholastic Athletic Association to work high school games. As spring 2015 approached, however, I started thinking differently.

I love baseball. All my computer screen savers are baseball. My cell phone’s text notification is the sound of a ball hitting a bat. My ringtone is Abbott and Costello’s “Who’s On First” routine. I don’t want to give up umpiring.

Next time, if I do get hit and it affects me, I won’t hesitate to talk with my partner. Your judgment can get clouded. You don’t know how bad it really is, but with everything we now know about concussions, you shouldn’t mess around.

Despite the shadow hanging over my first experience with high school baseball, I’m still looking forward to this season. I’m ready.

The post One and Nearly Done appeared first on Referee.com.

Sure, basketball is important to NCAA men’s referee Keith Kimble. But that’s only 20 percent. It’s the other 80 percent of his life that matters most.

Keith Kimble is a familiar face to college basketball aficionados. Last year, the Arlington, Texas, resident traveled throughout the country crisscrossing 33 states to work 104 NCAA Division I men’s games in just over four months, more than any other official in the country, before the COVID-19 pandemic brought the season to a halt. At one point, he worked 10 consecutive days.

His résumé includes trips to seven NCAA tournaments and the last two Final Fours.

But when asked to reflect on his career, the 48-year-old Kimble speaks first not of his own accomplishments, but of those who supported him during his ascension through the officiating ranks. He praises those who mentored him not only on how to handle situations on the court, but also on how to conduct himself off it.

And when those mentors and coordinators discuss Kimble, they speak first of his humility.

“He’s one of those young men I thank God for,” said Bobby Jacobs, also a longtime college official as well as Kimble’s high school principal and the man who introduced him to officiating. “Because of how he conducts himself. He tries to give me all the credit but I won’t let him do that.”

Early on, J.D. Collins, the NCAA’s national coordinator for men’s basketball officiating, was impressed with Kimble’s oncourt comportment. “His demeanor doesn’t change,” Collins said. “And that impressed me the first time I saw him and still does, quite frankly.”

Kimble’s journey began in Waco, Texas, where he grew up. He was raised by a maternal grandmother because his parents were “suffering from an up-and-down lifestyle that my grandma did not want me to be part of.” He was also supported by a corps of six aunts and two uncles.

“(The aunts and uncles) were older than me,” he recalled, “which helped guide me in many different ways.”

In short order, sports became Kimble’s outlet. He spent most of his after-school hours at the local YMCA, where he was inspired by Earl Stinnett, the branch director. Today, nearly four decades after their first meeting, Stinnett still remains an influential figure in Kimble’s life. He sees Stinnett as an uncle figure.

“The way he carried himself as a man in general, it just really, really stuck out to me,” Kimble recalled. “I asked Earl a lot of questions coming up, dealing with everyday life, business with my family. I just patterned myself after this guy. Today I could give him a call and he would talk to me about just about anything and help to guide me.”

Kimble was particularly impressed by his mentor’s manner. “Earl was always cool, calm and collected during good or bad situations,” he said. “I can’t remember a time when Earl ever came out of that. I do believe that’s where I get my calm, cool demeanor that I need to be successful in this officiating business.”

Kimble played basketball at Waco High School, where one of his teachers, Ronald Rush, become a mentor until Rush’s death in 2020. As with Stinnett, Kimble calls Rush an uncle figure and, when the situation called for it, a disciplinarian.
“I did not want to do anything to come out of my norm of dealing with my everyday life,” Kimble said, “because I knew if I made a wrong decision, I was going to have to face (Rush’s) wrath.”

Getting Started

Kimble got his first taste of officiating in high school, working recreation and church league games, thanks to Jacobs, who was Waco High’s principal at the time and who had a long career officiating in the Big Eight, the Southwest and the Western Athletic conferences, among others.

Jacobs first crossed paths with Kimble when the latter was in middle school and has been a role model and mentor ever since.

“Mr. Jacobs was the father figure in my life, pretty much from junior high onward,” Kimble said. “He was Ronald Rush and Earl Stinnett wrapped in one.

“If there was anybody I patterned myself after in a professional manner, whether on the court or off the court, it was Bobby Jacobs. He was the pinnacle I wanted to reach as far as being a professional. He had reached those goals that I planned for myself.”
After high school, Kimble played basketball at McLennan Community College in Waco and later at Texas A&I (now Texas A&M-Kingsville).

After college, he joined the local chapter of the Texas High School Basketball Officials Association. There, he found a membership that was supportive of young officials.

“That support system consisted of the more-experienced officials reaching out to the younger officials and pretty much mentoring them,” Kimble recalled.

Around the same time, he attended a camp run by Tony Stigliano, who assigned college games below the D-I level. Kimble was encouraged by Jacobs, who was a clinician at the camp and took the aspiring young official under his expansive wings, sharing with him the nuances that would prepare him to work at the collegiate level.

“He cleaned me up on the do’s and don’ts within the business,” Kimble said, “whether it’s respecting others, respecting your peers, respecting coaches when need be. Handling coaches when they are outrageous. … How to have a passionate demeanor to the point where not only your peers but the coaches and the players will respect you.

“Whether it’s the way I dress, or the way that I speak, whether it’s the way I do my business — a prime example —handling paperwork, all of that, he pretty much molded me. He took a pile of Play-Doh and he helped mold me to the point to where I’m at today.”

Jacobs says Kimble learned his lessons well. “Keith is that person who is approachable,” he said. “You can communicate with him. He can communicate with you. Not only on the rules and interpretations and floor coverages. It’s the manner in which he carries himself.”

In short order, Kimble was working a mix of high school, JUCO and NCAA Division II and III games.

Onward and Upward

From there he began a steady climb up the ranks. He started a five-year stint in the D-League in 2003 and worked in the WNBA for a single season in 2004.

Kimble reached the Division I level in 2007 when Dale Kelley hired him to work in the Big 12, but his focus was on an NBA career.

“Point blank, that was my goal at the time,” he said.

Amid all of the officiating, Kimble was fitting his schedule around other employment — or perhaps it was the other way around. He worked as the manager of a retail store, spent time as an aide in the Waco Independent School District, where he worked under Jacobs, and served as the sports director at the same YMCA branch where he spent so much time in his formative years.

But a conversation with Curtis Shaw in the summer of 2010 proved to be life changing and career altering. Shaw had been hired to succeed Kelley as the coordinator of officials for the Big 12, which was about to become part of a newly formed consortium with Conference USA, the Ohio Valley and the Southland conferences (today the consortium also includes the Missouri Valley). Shaw was preparing to assume the coordinator’s role for the new alliance.

“Mr. Shaw and I had a relationship prior to him becoming the boss,” Kimble recalled. “I had worked with him one or two times. Once he became the boss, he pulled me to the side and we had a very intense conversation. It wasn’t intense about my behavior, nothing of that nature, it was more about, ‘What do I really want to do with my career?’”

The conversation focused on how Kimble’s decision to pursue his NBA ambitions or remain on the college track would impact his family.

“The difference in the NBA is the amount of time that you’re actually gone is drastically different,” Shaw said. “Keith has a wife; I appreciate and like what she’s done (supporting) his career. I told him the NBA is more structured. It’s going to take you longer to move up because of the way the system works. But in college basketball, he has the opportunity to move up just as soon as possible.”

Shaw pointed out to Kimble that he could advance more rapidly at the college level and have a 20- to 25-year career on the floor while having some control over his schedule as opposed to being at the NBA’s beck and call.

To say Kimble found Shaw’s argument persuasive was an understatement. “I’d been through a lot with my family as far as changing jobs,” he said, “as far as my wife being the breadwinner a certain amount of the time while I was pursuing where I wanted to be. Mr. Shaw’s communication with me was literally about just that. About doing things to make sure you can handle things to make sure you can take care of your family now.

“I’m telling you, it was intense and I love him for opening my eyes to whereas I had to start managing things to involve my family.”

The Home Front

Kimble and his wife, Cynthia, have been married for 24 years. They have raised five children together, including a son and daughter of their own, Keith’s two sons from a previous relationship and Keith’s younger brother. All five are now adults.

While Cynthia has always supported Keith’s officiating ambitions, she admits there have been challenges along the way.

“When you’re as passionate as Keith is about (officiating), we just kind of do what we have to do,” she said. “We’ve been in this game for a very long time. I’ve always known where he wanted to go.

“I wasn’t always happy with it, but as we began to grow and started to see the fruits of his labor it became a little bit easier.”

Cynthia noted that Keith being away from home was particularly tough on the family when the children were younger. “I was the total person, being at home with them while he was on the road for five months out of the year,” she said. “The kids of course missed him and he missed a lot of activities because all the kids were basketball players and of course, during basketball season, he’s gone and they’re playing, so that was a little hard on them. But whenever he was home or could get home, he was there for all games possible.”

Cynthia notes that Keith worked to maintain his connection with his family and involve them in his career. When his games were within driving distance he would often take one of his children with him to give them some one-on-one-time with their father and, not incidentally, give them at least a taste of what college life was about.

Cynthia, who works as a human resources manager for AT&T, remains involved in Keith’s career by functioning as his travel agent. She travels with him to assignments when her schedule allows.

“That’s where we partner up,” she said.

In the aftermath of his conversation with Shaw, Kimble returned to the court at the start of the 2010-11 season with a renewed sense of purpose. Two years later he was able to make officiating his full-time vocation, a circumstance that caused him to rethink his attitude toward officiating.

“When I first started, I didn’t know you could actually take this as a full-time job,” he said. “Once I did, my whole mindset changed on how I handled things.”

Kimble “handled things” by adopting what he calls his 80/20 Rule. “The most important parts of what I’m doing are 80 percent off the court,” he said. “Twenty percent is what I do on the court. That’s my whole mindset of how I focus in on my job. I have to do the things that prep me up to do the 20 percent of my job; the two-and-a-half hours I’m out there (on the floor) actually working.

“Making sure I’m crossing my T’s and dotting my I’s, by getting paperwork in on time,” he said. “Making sure I’m up and abreast on the rules. How I’m handling situations when I’m the crew chief and have to handle certain things that need to be handled. I’m doing this because this is my job and this is the way I pay my bills.”

March Gladness

Kimble received his first NCAA tournament assignment in 2013 and has returned every year since. He reached the Sweet 16 for the first time in 2016 and beginning the following year, worked three consecutive regional finals.

Kimble was now unquestionably at the elite level of his profession. Far from resting on his laurels, he recommitted himself more than ever to his 80/20 philosophy, to doing what was necessary off the court to be able to perform at his best while on it.

“I don’t smoke or drink,” he said. “I get the proper rest. My travel is limited to a point where I can drive to a majority of my schedule.

“But you have to be disciplined on that. Because if you’re not disciplined on accepting certain things, you can accept the wrong things, which is you’re chasing that money. And if you’re chasing that money and not paying attention to the wear and tear of your body and what you’re doing, it will catch up with you.”

Kimble admits he’s had to fight the temptation to take on too many assignments. He says he’s looking to reduce his schedule going forward.

“It’s hard for us as officials, especially with what we’re blessed to be paid each game, to turn a game down,” he said. “For your mental and physical health, there is a limit.”

As Kimble’s stature has grown, so has his visibility increased. He accepts that reality and the importance of conducting himself a certain way “(in terms of) what I’m doing off the court, the way I’m carrying myself, knowing I’m in the limelight. My image is everything.”

Kimble was asked if he feels he is subjected to additional scrutiny because he is a person of color. “Yes, I do feel like I am looked at more,” he said, “to the point where the opportunity I get on the court, that 20 percent, pretty much reflects that 80 percent of me handling my business, because I feel I can be more affected if I don’t handle my business in the 80 percent range.”

In 2018, Kimble was assigned to the Final Four in San Antonio as the alternate. “It was a breath of fresh air and it was an accomplishment,” he said, “but it helped me work even harder to maintain my craft because I was at a point to where a lot of officials are saying, ‘This is where I want to be.’ So, it actually focused me in more on the challenge to keep working hard.

“I took it in for about 24 hours. That 25th hour it was time to go to work because I felt like I was going to be watched even more.”

The following year, Kimble was back at the Final Four in Minneapolis. He was assigned to the semifinal between Auburn and Virginia, teamed with Doug Sirmons and James Breeding.

“You can always kind of dream about how you feel when you referee in the Final Four,” Kimble said, “but I’m going to tell you, and any official that would tell you I’m not right when I say this is lying, you will have the biggest butterflies you will ever have once you hit that environment. Until you can actually get to a point where the ball is going up and you’re starting to run a couple of minutes or so. It got to me. It got to the first media timeout before I settled in and got rid of those butterflies.”

In the closing seconds of regulation with Auburn leading by two, Virginia’s Ty Jerome had possession near midcourt and double dribbled. But the violation was not detected by

Kimble, who was the primary official on the play.

The Cavaliers retained possession and won the game, 63-62, when Kyle Guy hit three free throws with 0.6 seconds remaining in regulation after being fouled during a three-point attempt.

“What it boils down to is I had to accept my own responsibility,” Kimble said. “I missed the play, period. I can give you every reason why; I was doing this, I was looking at the clock. I could give you all of that.

“Point blank? I feel very, very confident that my ability should have gotten a simple double-dribble play. So, what it boils down to is I missed the play.”

The Right Approach

Collins applauds the way Kimble approached the situation and its aftermath. “Keith’s approach to that issue is how you want an official to approach it,” he said. “You look at the situation, you acknowledge if you got it right or wrong. In this case, we missed a play and then you go through your internal processes.”

Collins described Kimble’s reaction in the aftermath of the Virginia-Auburn game as akin to grieving. “There is an appropriate period of time for every official to grieve a key missed play,” he said. “And I think Keith, in his own way, grieved that situation appropriately, he acknowledged it, accepted responsibility and admitted he got it wrong.”

What made it more difficult for Kimble was the fact that the national semifinal was his last of the year. There was no immediate opportunity to “get back in the saddle.”

“I had to go through the whole summer without being on the court to prove myself again,” he said.

But he did have the opportunity to talk about the game, the play and the aftermath with his peers a few months later at the NCAA Summer Academy.

“Keith was one of our clinicians,” Collins said. “I had all the clinicians present something to the group that they were with. Keith spent an hour talking about (the Virginia-Auburn game) and while it was good for the participants to hear, I think it was equally good for Keith to be able share and talk about it because he didn’t have a next game to go to and I think it worked out quite well.”

Once he got back on the court Kimble did his best to put the Virginia-Auburn game behind him by going back to basics.

“To keep moving on from it, I just have to make sure I get myself to a point to where I practice good habits,” he said. “Go to the basics, understand what (a) double dribble is, and when it occurs again have faith and trust that I can get the play. So, I have to be mentally strong and think positive and don’t let the negative way bring me down.”

At 48, Kimble theoretically has a number of years left on the floor. He’s already accomplished a lot. But the achievement he’s most proud of has nothing to do with basketball.

“I’m blessed to be in (officiating),” he said. “I look at my family and they are not in need of anything major. My wife and I have really worked hard to become a team to a point I’ve been blessed with my profession and she’s been blessed with her profession. We don’t struggle as a lot of other families might do. We have this family going on and a lot of other families are not in position to handle their basic needs.”

The post NCAA Referee Keith Kimble Keeps It All In Perspective appeared first on Referee.com.

ave you ever wondered why officials wear black and white stripes? In the early days of football, referees wore white dress shirts, bow ties and beret-style hats. The notion was that a formally dressed gentleman had an air of authority, which is what you wanted in an official. However, the trouble was some teams also dressed in white, including a group of Arizona football players. In 1920, a quarterback passed a ball to a referee named Lloyd Olds after mistaking his white shirt for a team uniform. The mixup so bothered Olds that he appealed to a proprietor of a sporting goods store to make a shirt that would set him apart from the players. And so, the black-and-white striped shirt was born.

Perhaps the selection of black and white stripes of equal width was more prophetic than originally intended. A century later sports in general, and officiating in particular, is more diverse than ever. Given the current state of affairs in this country, it is important to reflect on how officials are well ahead of the curve with regard to racial harmony. I am not saying there has never been racial injustice in officiating, nor am I saying there are not lingering issues. But those of us who officiate know we are different, we are special and that the stripes unite us.

The colors of our stripes mean more than just differentiation from the participants. Black and white are neutral colors, and we are charged with practicing neutrality. Our rulebooks are written in black and white, but we interpret the gray. We are covered in the pattern of stripes of equal width, so there is no mistaking our neutrality. Most important, our colleagues are Black and white, but we are all the same when we don the uniform. Why? Because we must go to battle with people we trust. We know that regardless of the color of the person inside the jersey, that person is generally good and ultimately our greatest ally. How good? I would argue that an overwhelming number are good people. The bad seeds usually weed themselves out and do not make it.

My closest friends are officials, and we gravitate toward each other regardless of race because we have common interests and goals. My kids call my officiating friends their uncles — and their children their cousins — regardless of whether they look like them. Sure, we have differences and even prejudices, but we embrace the differences, and often laugh at them, never thinking about acting on the prejudices, just knowing they exist. We are comfortable around our fellow officials and we know they will not be offended by the things we say, and in the unlikely event they are, an apology is sufficient and we move on.

People often compare officiating organizations to fraternities, but that comparison could not be more disparate. Unlike a traditional fraternity, we are afforded the opportunity to learn about one another’s differences. My officiating colleagues have witnessed me fast on game days that fall on Yom Kippur, some even learning about the holiday for the first time. Several years ago before a game at a Historically Black College or University, my umpire was singing along to a song commonly referred to as the Black national anthem, so we learned about it on the spot from him.

We get along because we are united by the stripes and bound by something more profound — the relatively small percentage of people with our scars. We are the arbiters of fairness and justice between two factions that do not care who we are or what we look like, not to mention the spectators berating us and wishing our demise. We succeed and sometimes falter together and support one another without giving a second thought to race.

Sports is a microcosm of life. Camaraderie in the locker room and on the field should translate to camaraderie off the field. Perhaps I am an idealist, but anyone who has been involved in sports appreciates that if you can get to know people and trust them enough, and spend any amount of time with them in sports, the natural progression is friendship off the field, regardless of color. That is how I was raised, that is how I have lived and that is how I teach my sons, both athletes.

Officials are blessed more than most; given our average ages, we should thank God each day that we are able to compete in an athletic forum, as most playing careers never have the longevity of an officiating career. The true blessing lies in the friendships we make over the course of that career. Black and white is important to us, to a certain extent. It matters because our race is part of our identities, but so is the black and white we wear on our backs. America could take its cues from officials in that we embrace our differences and celebrate what unites us.

The post It’s Black and White appeared first on Referee.com.

Bruns? He’s a baseball guy, but you will search online in vain for his breathtaking highlights. Instead, he changes the game with the stroke of his pen … or better yet, the click of a button.

Since September 2015, Bruns has been the secretary-rules editor for NCAA baseball. After working the plate and bases for hundreds of games to ensure college teams played by the rules, he now helps lead the committee that writes them.

“There’s a lot more that goes along with this position than most people would ever understand,” Bruns said. “And certainly even more than I understood when I was an onfield umpire. When I was first approached with the idea of becoming secretary-rules editor, I didn’t want it. But after giving it some thought, I decided it would be a good way to remain involved with the game and the officiating.”

That involvement began during youth baseball in Denver, Iowa, in the late 1960s, when Bruns filled in for Little League games that did not have umpires. His big break came as a 16-year-old when he was at a park awaiting the start of a men’s fast-pitch softball game.
“One of the umpires didn’t show up, and some of the players knew I was the catcher on my high school baseball team,” Bruns said. “They figured I was used to being behind the plate and knew how to call balls and strikes, so they asked me to help them out.

“After that, they asked me to work a couple of tournaments on the weekends. Back then, a few dollars was a big deal to a high school kid, and that’s what got me started.”

Bitten by the bug of those impromptu recreation league assignments, Bruns registered with the Iowa High School Athletic Association to officiate baseball, basketball and football. During his freshman year at Luther College in 1970, he worked his first high school varsity basketball game. He began working high school baseball the following spring and added football in the fall of 1971.

“Officiating is something I became pretty passionate about right away,” he said. “When I was in high school, I was refereeing junior high basketball and football. When I graduated from high school, I was eligible to work varsity and junior varsity games. I was putting myself through college working those three sports.”

Bruns completed his degree in education in 1974 and accepted a position with the Waverly-Shell Rock School District in Waverly, Iowa. Similar to his initial high school officiating assignment, Bruns notched his first NCAA Division III basketball game the season after graduating from college. In his first year of post-student life, he balanced his time among teaching, coaching baseball as an assistant, officiating high school and college athletics throughout his home state, and finalizing wedding plans with his fiancée.

“I’ve never known Randy when he wasn’t officiating,” said Jana Bruns, Randy’s wife of 45 years and a fellow Luther College alum. “Since I was a physical education major, I had an interest in sports, so we had some common ground there. Baseball and basketball were my favorite sports when I was growing up, so his officiating was not a problem for me.”

The first three years of their marriage kept Randy close to home, but a door opened in 1978 for him to attend the Bill Kinnamon Umpire School in St. Petersburg, Fla. He and Jana knew the timing for him to chase that dream was as good as it could ever get.

“I was in my fourth year of teaching and we didn’t have any children,” Bruns said, “but we hadn’t been away from each other for more than a day up to that point. She knew how much I loved officiating, and we agreed that was the right time to go for it.

“I thought going to professional umpire school and having that intense five-week training session would be a great exposure. Even if I didn’t make it as a professional umpire, the training would carry over to basketball and football. I understood the odds of getting a job offer to work in the minors were very small, but all of a sudden, I got one. I thought if I do it for a year, that’s an experience I could never duplicate.”

One year morphed into eight, with Bruns working his way up to the Triple-A level. Soaking up the instruction and training was his primary intent, and his eyes were wide open in regard to any possible promotion to the majors. When his run came to its end in 1985 without him getting the call from the majors, he handled the letdown with a realistic levelheadedness that defines his personality.

“I knew only one or two umpires may get promoted to the majors each year,” said Bruns, who spent four seasons in Triple-A.

“If umpires don’t go to the major leagues, they have nowhere else to go. No one’s going to make a career of umpiring Triple-A baseball, so after three or four years, they release a good number of high-quality umpires. It’s not because they don’t do good work on the field … the number of spots in the major leagues is few.”

On the day after Bruns worked what would be his final Triple-A game, Jana delivered the couple’s second child in four years. When Bruns learned he would not be retained for the 1986 season, he and his wife concluded that was a good time for him to return to the real working world and focus on raising their children. In between minor league seasons, he did some work in financial services, so he launched the next stage of his professional life in the business sector. He also returned to his officiating roots with a renewed outlook on the avocation.

“I had a fairly easy transition to working high school and college baseball since I already had a feel for that level of athletes,” Bruns said. “I enjoyed my time teaching and coaching, so I did not have a difficult time falling back on that experience after my years in professional baseball.”

Neither did he have much trouble catapulting his college umpiring career. In 1986, he started his 30 years in Division I by working the Big Ten, the former Big Eight and the Missouri Valley conferences. His small-college work in 1987 led to him working that season’s Division III College World Series. Throughout the 1990s, Bruns took the field for various conference tournaments, regionals and super regionals, ultimately landing the first of his three D-I College World Series assignments in 1999.

“There’s nothing like working those World Series games in Omaha,” Bruns said. “Certainly I was honored to get that privilege. The level of excitement and anticipation on the field and in the stands is unlike any other experience I’ve had.”

If Bruns had not soared to the top of college baseball’s mountain, his officiating accolades would still stand tall. Chasing his major league aspirations did not limit Bruns’ work in football and basketball. He maintained busy schedules in both sports, establishing himself as one of Iowa’s most trusted officials.

“His reputation is beyond reproach,” said Chuck Brittain, a 46-year officiating veteran and Bruns’ longtime basketball partner. “The professionalism, dignity and competency Randy exhibits are exemplary. There are other people in our officiating community who may have as much of those qualities as he has, but no one has more.”

For 20-plus years, Bruns and Brittain were virtually inseparable on the basketball court during the era when most games had only two officials. Brittain estimates the duo worked close to 50 games each of those years across high school and college. During those 20-plus years, they were assigned to more than 100 Iowa state playoff contests, including seven state championships. A partnership with that depth of durability boils down to two factors: convenience and trust.

“Randy and I lived across the street from each other, so other than a few games here and there, we did all of our games together in high school and college,” said Brittain, now Iowa’s coordinator of officials for boys’ and girls’ basketball. “We had each other’s back and we could depend on each other. We shared the same philosophy, didn’t fish in each other’s pond and enjoyed every chance we had to work together.

“Another huge factor is we have really good wives. If you’re married, you can’t officiate and be good at it for a long time without having a really good (spouse). Officiating has a lot of carnage with marriages and family turmoil. Randy and I committed ourselves to avoid that. We traveled together and brought our families with us on many occasions. That helped us become a rock-solid unit.”

The reliability he could count on from Brittain was only a fraction of the reliability Bruns had at home.

“I was very fortunate to be one of the umpires in professional baseball at the time who was married to the same woman when he got out as when he got in,” Bruns said. “That’s a testament to Jana’s ability to keep things going at home while I was on the road so much during those years. She was an absolute rock, and I am very grateful for her support over the years.”

Jana managed her teaching career, her husband’s schedule and their children’s upbringing with a pragmatic approach. She embraced her family’s busy lifestyle and determined she would not permit Randy’s officiating to become a source of contention.
“I didn’t want to be an ‘official’s widow,’” she said. “I traveled with Randy as much as I could; I wanted to meet the other officials’ wives. I knew officiating was important to

Randy, so I did what I could to encourage him in it.”
Randy and Jana established a protocol for their family to make up for lost time when hundreds of miles separated them and their children, Anne and Brian. They vowed to commemorate all the important holidays and family milestones, regardless of when the commemoration took place.

“Our anniversary is in June, but we haven’t always celebrated it on that date because I was away from home,” Randy said. “We’ve celebrated Christmas in February because I may have been in the Dominican Republic for winter ball in December. We didn’t want our children to miss the fun of the holidays. Setting aside that time for family — no matter what the date is — remains a priority for us.”

The salesmanship that is innate in officiating does not apply only when making tough calls on bang-bang plays. It is essential when shaking hands or bumping fists with someone for the first time. The first impression Bruns made on Jeff Henrichs remains unchanged almost 30 years later.

“You just know when you meet good people in this profession,” said Henrichs, a 26-year veteran of the Big 12 and Pac-12 who also reached Triple-A. “I could tell he didn’t have a big ego that got in his way. He never had to spit out his résumé, but I knew he had that ‘it.’ I also sensed he was a good person who cares about people, and being a good person goes a long way in officiating.

“He’s the kind of guy you want to work with and hang out with afterward. He personifies what the brotherhood of umpires is all about. Randy always promoted other umpires. If you are a good umpire, Randy makes sure people know about you.”

One of those umpires is Mike Droll. Like most high school umpires in Iowa during the early and mid-1980s, Droll knew of Bruns by keeping his eye on Bruns’ minor league progress and pulling for him to crack the major league staff. The high school diamond provided a soft landing spot for Bruns after his discharge from the minors, and a game in 1986 paired him with Droll.

“His professional experience was obvious,” Droll said about his first time working with Bruns. “He was more technically sound than anyone I’d seen up to that time; he was never out of position and he had a distinct presence on the field.”

In the subsequent years, Droll, a resident of Coralville, Iowa, remained in touch with Bruns. When he started knocking on the door of Division I baseball, Bruns opened it for him by “putting his money where his mouth was,” as Droll summarized it.

“The first year the Big Eight had a supervisor of umpires was 1989. Randy suggested to the supervisor he remove Randy from a series so I could get a shot at working a Division I series. How many guys would forego a series and give up the income so a younger umpire could have the opportunity to work major college baseball? It epitomizes the kind of person Randy is and I’ll never forget that gesture.”

Sports leagues and organizations seem on an endless quest to improve their games, either for the safety of their players or the convenience of their fans. As NCAA baseball continues solidifying its visibility within the fabric of college athletics, it will tinker with rules revisions and additions every year. Bruns may not initiate those changes, but he is still heavily involved in the process.

“During the season, I observe games on both video and in person to see how umpires are enforcing rules,” Bruns said. “I look for trends that may require updates, and that leads to feedback from conferences and umpires.

“We have major updates to the rules every two years. The rules committee is always gathering information about suggested rules changes and edits to the rulebook. We feed that information to coaches and administrators from Divisions I, II and III on the committee, and they determine exactly which ones they’re going to put forward.”

After proposed changes become law, Bruns’ task is to graft the new rule into the rulebook. That process entails much more than typing a couple lines of text into an existing file.

“I have to figure out what other rules are affected by the changes,” Bruns said. “I also need to ensure the wording is clear because using the correct language is critical. We want to make the changes without leaving players, coaches and officials confused.”

Bruns and George Drouches, the NCAA national coordinator of umpires, collaborate on myriad projects both during the season and offseason. Their teamwork produces most of the training material designed to inform and reinforce rules knowledge, mechanics and philosophy. Because they use print and video platforms, their presentations of those documents and visual aids demand constant contact between them.

“We talk on a daily basis, and sometimes that becomes an hourly basis,” said Drouches, who became national coordinator in 2014. “Randy and I are the leaders of the baseball officiating community. With me leading the many facets of the NCAA baseball umpiring program and him in charge of the rules that govern our game, our roles have some overlap.

“We work hand in hand, not only in rules compliance but also the educational side. It’s our job to get the umpires up to speed with changes to the rulebook and the mechanics manual, and for stakeholders affiliated with NCAA baseball to align with training, education and testing benchmarks. This will all but eliminate the possibility that the integrity of our game can be compromised.”

Drouches may take partial credit for Bruns succeeding Jim Paronto in the secretary-editor role. When Paronto’s term of service ended, Drouches pitched Bruns about filling that void.

“I knew he’d be excellent,” said Drouches, who served as the Division III coordinator of umpires previous to his present post. “He’s diligent, responsive and well-respected by coordinators and onfield umpires across the country. In the few years he’s been in that position, he’s done a phenomenal job with NCAA baseball rule interpretations and clarifications, as well as editing and transforming the baseball rulebook into a succinct publication.”

That transformation is an ongoing project Bruns pinpoints as one of the most urgent on his to-do list. Although the NCAA employs a two-year cycle for major rules revisions, editorial changes occur every year, which means Bruns can streamline the baseball code for every season.

“I’ve made a concerted effort to clean up some things that accumulated in our rules over the last 30 years,” Bruns said. “That’s a major responsibility I do with Ben Brownlee, the baseball liaison at the NCAA. I knew there was a lot we could remove from the language to make the rules easier to grasp, enforce and explain.”

Three years ago, Bruns retired from a financial services company, bringing a 32-year career in the industry to a close. Most of that time saw him training and developing financial advisers. The mutual threads of his success in the corporate world and in officiating are keen instincts and thick skin.

“Being in training situations in the business sector, I have to think on my feet a lot when I’m speaking in front of groups. Even with individual training, the ability to not worry about someone’s comment was beneficial to me,” Bruns said.

“When I interviewed to become a trade review principal, one of the interviewers asked how I would respond when people don’t agree with my opinion. I started laughing and explained my officiating background. Since I’d been yelled at by thousands of people and scrutinized on national television, someone who believes my financial decision is not suitable is not going to bother me very much.”

The baseball file in Bruns’ officiating portfolio may have the most entries, but his football and basketball achievements are also noteworthy. In 2007, he was the crew chief for the NCAA D-III football national championship game. He also has a D-III basketball Final Four under his belt. He may have been equally as prolific had he prioritized football or basketball, but his boyhood roots pushed baseball to become his adulthood route.

“Baseball has always had my heart,” Bruns said. “My dad is a big Chicago Cubs fan, and he was a pretty good baseball player, so baseball was a big part of our home for as long as I can remember. My officiating passion was basketball, but baseball is my game … it’s the love of my athletics life. It was hard to overcome that.

“College baseball is a great game that’s getting more exposure and we are doing more things to make it better. There are some things I miss by not being on the field, but I’m in a terrific place.”

The post Home Bruns appeared first on Referee.com.

L

Life sometimes can hinge upon a chance meeting. That’s how it worked for NCAA basketball official Ron Groover. From relaxing after a pickup basketball game in 1994, to officiating the national championship game of the 2019 NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament. It took a few years to travel that road of course, but that all-important day at a local basketball gym in his hometown of Hapeville, Ga., set in motion what has been an eminently successful career, one that is only beginning to fully blossom on the national stage.

“One day a bunch of us were at our local recreation center playing pickup basketball,” Groover recalled. “As our pickup game finished, the 10U youth basketball teams were coming in for their scheduled games and I began to take my sneakers off on the sidelines. There happened to be a basketball official named Larry Bin standing on the sideline waiting to officiate the games. We started chatting and I asked him how he became a ref. He asked me if I was interested and I said, ‘Yes.’ He gave me his pager number, I called, and I ended up working a few games at the recreation center soon after.”

Groover was off and running, not just playing basketball but following the action with a whistle and making calls as a 24-year-old official. “There were a couple of local recreation centers with kids’ and men’s league games where I began my officiating journey,” he said.
After a while, Groover was invited to attend a high school officials meeting; before you knew it, he was officiating high school games and within two years was working at the NCAA junior college and NAIA level.

“Larry happened to be ‘that guy,’” Groover said. “It could have been someone else standing next to him having that conversation. But it was me and I’m so glad that it did take place.” Groover certainly earned his stripes at various levels of competition since that day.

“Looking back at where I am in this point in my life, the first year, I had no idea what I was doing, I just jumped in,” he said. “Now the game has slowed down for me, but back then it seemed the players were moving fast, the fans were screaming and action was just flying by.”

Fortunately for Groover, he had a friend and mentor to consult with in Bin. “We would debrief after games,” Groover said. “He was never in a rush to grab his bag and head out the door. He was always available to answer questions. He also asked me what I saw on the court and helped me find the answers. It was great the way he coached me and motivated me. He introduced me to high school officiating and that was a big jump for me.”

While working at various levels of basketball paid dividends for Groover, he said the experiences weren’t always the most pleasurable. “I’m happy I worked in high school and recreation basketball,” he said. “It taught me a lot about how to perform as an official. I attended many camps during the summers and that was always productive. Now, watching my son officiate middle school and junior varsity games and witnessing the way parents and fans behave, I don’t know if that is the most positive place for young officials to learn their trade. The way people behave at sporting events you would never see them behave at Walmart or Target. The last few years, we have been struggling to get people to officiate at the lower levels just because of the hostility that occurs.”

Groover believes it should be the responsibility of leaders of the schools, athletic directors or school administrators — not the officials working the game — to control crowds. “I don’t think it should be the person being paid 25 or 50 bucks to kick a person out of a gym and then have to fight their way to the car after a game,” he explained. “This is a difficult and unsafe situation for an official to experience during his or her officiating career.”

Climbing the officiating ladder, Groover concentrated on Division II and NAIA games in the late 1990s and by 2004 he was hired to work games in the Southeastern Conference, Atlantic Coast Conference as well as the NBA D-League (he resigned in 2007 to focus on college basketball). “I felt I was ready for it,” he said of moving to the Division I level. “I guess back then I thought I was ready to do an NCAA championship game. It was like growing up in my neighborhood, being tough and competitive. Not arrogant but competitive with myself. I believe this mental toughness has helped get me to where I am today. But I also know now all the time served prior to working the Final Four was worth the wait.”

Groover currently works in the ACC/Big East Consortium, the SEC Consortium, and the Big 12 Consortium. He’s worked 12 NCAA tournaments, starting in 2007, eight Regionals and two Final Fours and has called multiple conference tournament championship games in the SEC and ACC.

Georgia on My Mind

Groover, who graduated from Hapeville (Ga.) High School and attended the University of West Georgia, lives with his family in Newnan, Ga., about 40 miles south of Atlanta. He and his wife, Stacey, have been married for 27 years and are high school sweethearts. They have three children: son, Glavin, is 24 and twin daughters, Karlee and Kara, are 21.

In addition to his officiating duties, Groover served as a head coach of the varsity girls’ fast-pitch team at The Heritage School outside of Atlanta. He coached Karlee and Kara in fast-pitch softball at the school for four years and travel level for 12 years.

“It was a passion for me and I loved it,” Groover said. “I was fortunate to watch the same group of girls grow from 6-year-olds to 18-year-old young women.” Both daughters went on to play sports in college — one in volleyball and one in basketball. “I guess my softball coaching prepared them to play a sport other than softball,” he said.

He did all this while balancing working at The Hertz Corporation in Atlanta as an operation manager for 25 years before retiring in 2015 to concentrate on officiating college basketball. Groover also enjoys a game of golf with his neighbors when he has time. He finds the game relaxing and a way to unwind from his career.

Being an official made Groover sympathetic to the plight of referees and umpires during his coaching days.

“I was coaching a softball game and one of our parents was riding the umpire pretty hard,” Groover said. “She was known for conversing with the umpires on a regular basis. During the game, we had a really close play which was not called in our favor. The mom started on the umpire and it was loud. So, I decided to go out and talk to him about the call. Being an official I know there are plays that are just impossible. The umpire asked me what I was doing and what the issue was and I said, ‘I’m just coming out here to act like we are discussing the outcome of the play, but honestly I’m here to say thanks for being here and please don’t listen to our screaming mom. You guys are doing a good job.’ He just shook his head.”

Groover’s son, 24-year-old Glavin, is starting his journey as a basketball official. He is refereeing high school and junior college games early on, as his dad did.

“I’m proud of him,” said the elder Groover, who coached his son’s travel baseball team for eight years. “Glavin and I discuss expectations with officiating. I have told him, ‘Work hard every game regardless of the level and take advantage of the lifelong relationships you can make during your career.’ All he has known is his father officiating. If he has questions, we will talk about them. Even when he was playing, we would talk about his game, the plays that happened and any other questions he may have had, on the rides home. I’ve seen in him this past season a lot more passion and desire for officiating. He is starting to get the bug.”

Glavin Groover credits his dad with setting a great example for him on and off the court. “My dad has influenced me in more ways than basketball officiating,” Glavin said. “He has always been my biggest role model throughout my life. He has taught me to be my best self every day. He has taught me to care for others like I would want them to care for me.

“He definitely influenced my decision to become an official. I have witnessed him grow in the officiating world and I know how much joy officiating brings him. I have loved walking into a gym or officiating meetings as a young official because of my dad’s journey in this business. He has taught me to look at the game of basketball in a way it would have taken me many years of experience to see. I would be grateful and blessed to have the career my dad has enjoyed as an official.”

Forward Communication

Bryan Kersey, ACC coordinator of men’s basketball officials, got to know Groover about 15 years ago and knew he had a future. “He had great poise and was a really good play-caller,” Kersey recalled. “At that time, he needed to improve his communication and sort of come out of his shell to let his personality take over; he basically needed to enjoy what he did.”

And that’s just what he did.

Kersey has been impressed with Groover’s growth and work as an ACC official. “He has done a great job for me since I became a coordinator,” Kersey said. “When I got the job and talked to him, I explained I needed him to be a leader, not only on the floor but off. I told him there are a lot of games where we need three crew chiefs in them and I needed him to be one of those guys; don’t try to blend in as an individual but create team officiating within the crew. I also told him he had to be able to communicate, which he has done a great job of.

“He is a great play-caller because he doesn’t get excited and he processes what he sees. He is in great shape, which allows him to get in the proper position to make the right call and be able to see the entire play from start to finish.”

Kersey believes the art of oncourt communication has been one of Groover’s biggest growth spurts in recent years.

“He is a leader on the floor, which commands the respect of the coaches,” Kersey said. “When he first became a crew chief with us, he didn’t always know the right things to say to coaches. But he has learned to listen and it has helped him grow. Also, he knows the game; he has gotten deep into film study and gotten deep into rules knowledge. This has helped him become fully engaged in what he does. He is a mentor to less-experienced officials — he learns while he teaches, which has helped him a great deal. He isn’t afraid to make the big call when it is needed.”

Kersey said Groover prepares himself for whatever each game brings. “The great thing about college basketball is it is non-scripted,” Kersey said, “so every night is different, and he prepares for each game individually and gets his crew ready each night he walks onto the floor.”

J.D. Collins, NCAA national coordinator of men’s basketball officiating, has known Groover for more than 15 years. “Back in the day, I officiated with him when he was a lesser experienced official,” Collins said. “He has established himself as one of the best in the business. He continues to be a student of the game and puts great effort into every game he officiates. Ron continues to hone his craft.

“He has developed a no-nonsense approach and matched that with great communication skills. Nothing rattles Ron on the floor. He operates in a poised manner and doesn’t allow outside influences to fluster him. He has a calming approach with the coaches and they appreciate that.”

Communication was mentioned several times by both coordinators and it is something Groover has worked to improve as he has matured as a big-time official.

“I called more technical fouls in my earlier years,” Groover said. “In the last five to eight years, I’m finding that calling technicals is not the only way that you can control things on the court. You can also do it by communicating and listening to players and coaches. Now, it’s a big part of what I try to get across when I get invited to attend camps. I drive communication and listening hard to the young and up-and-coming people.”

Veteran NCAA official Tony Greene and Groover have worked together on the court and are close friends. “I first met Ron well over 20 years ago at an SEC officiating camp,” Greene recalled. “We have worked plenty of games over the years. Those include games as he climbed the ladder from the lower level leagues under the SEC umbrella to games in various other leagues once he made it to the Power 5.”

Greene also believes his buddy has grown “tremendously” as an official because “he listens well and he was always in tip-top condition.

“His strengths are the great listening skills that he has along with the ability to incorporate his skills in management from his vocation and transfer those things onto the court,” Greene said. “He took on all sorts of personalities on his job, so his communication skills were phenomenal in dealing with players and coaches.”

Groover has the courage, Greene said, to make crucial calls at critical times of a game when a lot of people shy away from those situations. “That translates to being a great play-caller,” Greene said. “He has learned to help his partners in ways that will assist them in improving their games. He has a team mentality for the crew and not a ‘me mentality.’ He’s able to make his partners feel like they are a very integral part of the crew so they can go out and work with ease. His knowledge of the rules is incredible and impressive in pregame discussions.”

Greene said Groover also has a sharp sense of humor. “I really don’t have time to talk about all of the funny things this guy has done in my presence,” Greene said with a laugh. “He can imitate people almost better than Jamie Foxx.”
Greene recalled a ride home that showcases Groover’s personality. “When we’re driving back from a game and I’m in the passenger seat during the winter. I’ll doze off as he’s driving and I wake up screaming, ‘Why is this seat so hot?’ Ron will have reached over and turned the seat heater on high to wake me up. He’s the best. He’s like family. I love the guy.”

The Ultimate Assignment

When Groover got the call to referee the 2019 Texas Tech-Virginia National Championship game, he said it was mind numbing.

“I remember accepting the assignment and then tears rolling down my cheek,” he said. “They were thankful tears. I immediately thought of my wife and kids, all the sacrifices they made during my officiating journey. I thought of the many people that invested in me during my career — my bosses at work, co-workers, parents and in-laws that supported me along the way — not only with being fans of mine but helping with our child care or supporting us any way they could.

“I thought of the officiating supervisors that provided me opportunities to grow my career, trusted me in big games. My fellow officials without a doubt were running through my mind — the support, the learning from each other, the amazing lifelong relationships that have come out of this journey. All I could say was, ‘Wow, I’m so blessed.’ Being blessed with that opportunity was something as an official I thought was an unrealistic expectation. Yet I knew it was obtainable, because a crew of three gets assigned to work the game every year. But I will not let one assignment define my career or change who I am.”

After the call came assigning him to the 2019 national title game, Groover had time to think about the enormous experience ahead of him and his crew. “All I was thinking was to get the clock going, the players playing and the coaches coaching, and I will be at peace,” he said.

Groover’s wife and three children attended the game. When he looked up at them in the stands it made the experience even more special. Visually finding them was a challenge because there were 72,000 fans in U.S. Bank Stadium in Minneapolis.

“The two-and-a-half to three hours during the game was when I felt most comfortable,” Groover recalled. “I had awesome partners (Michael Stephens and Terry Wymer, along with standby official Chris Rastatter). My thinking going into each and every game is to keep it simple — we have to be right each possession; don’t look at the entire game, look at it in possession, in small bites. Our crew was successful that night. The game went smoothly. We had one replay late in the game on an out-of-bounds play that was discussed during the broadcast, but we got the call correct.” Virginia won the game, 85-77.

“I’m thankful for where I am at the moment,” he said. “I know it can all end today and if it did, I will have gotten so much out of this. My family, coaching, officiating, work — I don’t take anything for granted. I stress physical fitness as well as mental fitness, reading rulebooks, watching film and keeping up with any changes. I have attained credibility as an official and I want to sustain it. And I’m still looking to grow as an official.”

Groover credits “all the people” who have made his journey a remarkable one. “I want to give to the people coming up what I was given by others,” he said. “I look back to that night at the gym when I met Larry and it’s hard to believe how it has all worked out.”

The post Ron Groover is In the Groove appeared first on Referee.com.

“What the hell were you thinking on that catch?” Lepore raged.

“What catch?” a confused Bergman asked.

“You know what (deleted) catch!” Lepore fired back.

“Oh, you mean the catch at the sideline?” Bergman guessed after mentally rummaging through his calls that afternoon. “Well, Cal, in my opinion, I didn’t think he was going to come down inbounds. I just ruled him out of bounds.”

“Well, you’d better change your (deleted) opinion!” Lepore shot back through the steam before closing the shower curtain with disgust.

Bergman, 28 at the time and just starting to write one of the best pro football officiating stories ever written, was shaken by his seething boss. But there were still more slices of humble pie to be served within the next few hours. Bergman used a pay phone at Newark Liberty International Airport to call his father, Jerry, then in the midst of a distinguished career as an NFL official. After Lepore’s tongue lashing, Bergman was in need of a little positive reinforcement from his dad, who went on to finish his career in 1995 with four Super Bowl assignments on his résumé. Maybe his old man would at least offer some constructive criticism.

“Did you watch the game?” Jeff asked.

“What the (deleted) were you looking at?” his father immediately shot back, referencing that same play before Jeff could even ask him about it.

Bergman then placed a call to Stan Javie, a retired NFL officiating great who had worked with his father.

“Hi, Stan, this is Jeff,” Bergman said. “Did you happen to watch the game?”

“Yeah,” Javie replied. “I’d like to talk to you about a particular play.”

So it was for Bergman on that most brutal of days.

Javie calmly explained Bergman’s error — that under the rules back then when a defensive player forcibly knocked the receiver out of bounds and took away his opportunity to get his feet back down, a catch was awarded as long as the receiver maintained possession of the ball. Bergman didn’t award the catch and now he had to live with it.

“So I had three different teaching techniques within an hour,” Bergman said. “One was when I was naked in the shower and then my dad screaming at me on the phone and then Stan setting it up for me as if he was diagraming a play.”

Bergman took his lumps that day and he didn’t back down from a challenge, just as he doesn’t today as he looks after his cancer-stricken wife with his officiating future hanging in the balance. Instead, he kept listening and learning as the years passed, with a great deal of guidance coming from his gruff but loving father. Earning his father’s respect, which was never earned easily, was one source of inspiration that consistently drove Bergman to succeed. He has done just that in such spectacular fashion, both on and off the field. He is a self-made multi-millionaire who once helped develop a health services corporation that he and his other shareholders sold for $100 million in 1997, the same year Bergman earned his first Super Bowl assignment. That’s a hell of a career résumé right there. Yet Bergman, who officiated his first NFL game in 1991, somehow has found the drive after all these years to maintain a commanding presence while wearing his No. 32 striped shirt. He is the veteran of two Super Bowls, most recently in February 2019 (the 22-year gap between assignments in the big game is a record stretch for NFL officials), and at 66, he only seems to be getting better. In fact, Alex Kemp, the referee of his crew the last two seasons, goes as far as tabbing Bergie as the greatest line-of-scrimmage official in NFL history. Might Kemp’s objectivity be questioned given that the two are close friends who connect almost daily? You decide. Just be aware that Kemp comes equipped with endless stories to support his contention.

“Something hairy will happen on the field,” Kemp said, “and then he’ll come in, like for the next TV timeout or something, and he’ll say, ‘I saw this, this and this.’ He’s saying this before he’s had any opportunity to see any slow-motion replays or anything. You go back and look at the television and you see it happened exactly the same way he said. I’ve asked him, ‘Bergie, how do you do that?’ He said, ‘I’ve studied and I trained my mind so that I see a play in 8-by-10 frames. It’s, Boom! Boom! Boom! And I firmly believe we can all train ourselves to look at a football play in 8-by-10 frames.’ I think he’s done it. I don’t know how he’s done it, but he’s described things where the human eye can’t see it on the field. Maybe if you go back on film you can see it, but he says it before he’s looked at the film. So that tells me that he actually saw it. It’s amazing.”

It’s not difficult to find those who heartily agree with Kemp. Jeff and his younger brother, Jerry, an NFL head linesman (now down judge) since 2002, were raised by a master mentor. Their father’s silence was golden in terms of encouraging feedback. Both went on to make their father proud by creating impressive officiating legacies of their own.

“If you would look at a football official in the dictionary, Jeff Bergman comes to mind,” said Dean Blandino, former NFL vice president of officiating. “What has always stood out about Jeff is just his attention to his craft. He has the ability to break things down, whether it’s on the field or in the film room, and break it down in a way I have never seen an official do before — not just from an officiating X’s and O’s, but football X’s and O’s. It’s understanding formations and being able to recognize things that teams are doing and being able to anticipate before the snap and almost know where the critical part of the play is going to be before it happens. He has the ability to teach and train officials and give back to them.”

Nothing has ever gotten in the way of Bergman’s officiating except this: family. For the second time in his career, Bergman is sitting out a season to look after his wife, Beth Anne. As in 1997, she has been diagnosed with cancer. But he hopes to return for the 2021 season and take another step toward joining an elite contingent of officials who have worked 30 years in the league. One of those officials is his father. In the meantime, it’s just not going to be the same as Bergman takes a step back for what truly matters in his life.

“There’s no one else who has his passion,” said J.J. Jenkins, a field judge on Bergman’s crew the last two seasons. “He is an amazing, amazing person with the professionalism and requirement he brings. If you’re on his crew, he doesn’t allow you to slack. You just can’t. You have to show up and you have to be prepared and you have to be disciplined. You have to be committed. The difference between him and anyone else is he will give you a say at the table. That doesn’t mean there isn’t a hierarchy at that table, but he’ll allow you to have a say. And he will challenge you — not to make you feel inferior, but he’ll empower you to step up. So when a call needs to be made from a supporting position of another official, he’s basically challenged you in the pregame. So now that you’re on the football field, you can step up and even step in front to make a call correctly. That’s the expectation.”

That was the expectation as Jeff was raised by Jerry and Joanne Bergman at 107 Perryview Ave., a one-way street in northern Pittsburgh that offered avenues of opportunity to anyone who wanted anything badly enough. Born Sept. 23, 1954, Jeff was followed by siblings Julie, Jerry and Jeannine. He hitchhiked 12 miles a day while attending North Catholic High School, yet he was never late for class. When his father was hired by the NFL in 1966, the seed was planted within 12-year-old Jeff’s consciousness. By 1975, he officiated his first high school game while he was a student at Robert Morris University. Through Jeff’s progression as a young official, his father served as a somewhat distant, yet powerful mentor. There was so much to admire about the man.

“He was a technician, he was a rules aficionado and he had a passion for the sport unlike anyone I’ve ever seen before,” Bergman said. “I can see that in me now.”

But slaps on the back were in short supply. The most meaningful feedback from Jerry was no feedback at all. “If he said nothing, you knew that you hit a home run,” Bergman said. “He rarely would say anything to you. It wasn’t in his makeup.” But the time came when Jerry opened up just a little. That was in 1982, when Jeff was hired to work professionally for the first time in the new USFL.

“I was 28 years old when I worked my first professional game for the USFL,” Bergman said.

The USFL folded by 1986, but Bergman continued to make a name for himself. He was a college football official. He went on to work in the Arena League, including the first Arena Bowl in 1987, and NFL Europe, including the first World Bowl in 1991. That same year, he received his coveted call from the NFL, where he was on the same roster as his father for the next five seasons. Only once did the two work together — a 1991 preseason game at Pontiac, Mich. — and when it was over, crusty Jerry Bergman gave his oldest son the ultimate validation.

“He ran off the field and gave me a big hug,” an emotional Bergman said before pausing to compose himself. “Then we walked off the field with his arm around my shoulder.”

As Bergman continued to build the credibility he has today, there have been some moments he would love to have back. One of his biggest regrets came Jan. 3, 1999, when the Green Bay Packers were playing the San Francisco 49ers in an NFC Wild Card Game at Candlestick Park. The Packers, who had appeared in each of the previous two Super Bowls, were leading, 27-23, late in the game when 49ers receiver Jerry Rice appeared to fumble, but was ruled down by contact by Bergman. Even though replays indicated Rice lost possession before his knee hit the ground, Bergman’s ruling stood and the 49ers went on to win, 30-27. Instant replay challenges weren’t instituted by the NFL until the next season. After that game, Jerry Seeman, the NFL’s senior director of officiating at the time, informed Bergman that Rice had, indeed, fumbled.

“I sent the wrong team to the next round of the playoffs,” Bergman said. “Green Bay should have had the ball. They could have kneeled down and moved on to the next round of the playoffs. That play will never leave me.”

But Bergman’s entire body of work dwarfs his miscues. Heck, any official who has ever worked has made those. What stands out are the stories about Bergman’s career that underscore what an immense credit he has been to the game.

There are numerous stories floating around out there among those who have had the privilege of working with him about Bergie tolerating absolutely no baloney. In 2014, Kemp was a rookie side judge working on Bergman’s crew. Bergman had worked a preseason game involving Washington and had endured a particularly unruly sideline. When that crew returned to Washington for a regular-season game several weeks later, Bergman made it clear to Coach Jay Gruden his team was on a short leash.

“We go talk to the coaches 90 minutes before the game,” Kemp said, “and Bergie says, ‘Man, I’m going to tell the coach that his sideline was so bad during the preseason that if he doesn’t clean it up right now, we’re going to hit him with 15 right out of the gate.’ So we get in the coach’s office and he says, ‘OK, Coach, I’ve got to tell you, your sideline is not good. You’ve got to get that under control or we’re going to have to hit you with one.’ (Gruden) said, ‘Yeah, but you give us a warning for that first, don’t you?’ Bergie said, ‘Yeah, this is your warning — 11:37 a.m.’ He hits me in the chest and says, “Kemper, write this down — ‘11:37 a.m, first sideline warning, Washington.’

“The coach’s eyes were as big as pie plates. He yells at the strength coach, ‘Hey, get in here! We just got our first sideline warning! What the …?” You could have fired a cannon down that sideline. It was the most perfect sideline I’ve ever seen!”

NFL replay official Mike Chase identifies one reason for that mastery during a time in Bergman’s career when he could become lax and live on his laurels.

“The replay official gets left out of conversations sometimes,” Chase said. “But about halfway through my first season with Jeff, we for whatever reason bonded and we talked a lot. He started to call me and ask me replay questions. It struck me then and it still does to this day that he was in his 26th year in the NFL and he’s calling me to ask me questions about replay and rules and situations. He never, ever stops learning and he doesn’t care who he involved to get better. It changed my outlook from being fearful of dealing with NFL officials to, ‘Oh my God, he’s asking me! I better get this right!’ It just instantly made me better overnight.”

That collaborative spirit Bergman encourages also explains how he has achieved such spectacular success in the business world, where he has overseen “seven or eight” ventures involving medical devices and real estate. His most lucrative venture was Shared Medical Technologies, a mobile imaging company for which he served as president, chairman and CEO. Together with Dan Dickman, the vice president and chief operating officer, who met Bergman through officiating, they transformed the business into one that they eventually sold to Apollo Management.

“It was nothing and we turned it into what it became,” Dickman said. “Jeff had drive like nobody I ever knew. He’s just a never-quit guy. No matter what obstacles come up, he’s going to find an idea to defeat it and get the job done.”

Dave Malone and Jeff Pelusi, two longtime friends and business associates of Bergman’s, have personally witnessed that same drive. When Malone was asked what he most admired about Bergman, he said, “If I could only pick one, it’s his integrity. He never, ever doesn’t do what he says he’s going to do — ever.”

“I can count on two hands the kind of people that Jeff Bergman represents,” Pelusi said. “He’s incredibly honest, he’s got unbelievable integrity and there’s nothing he wouldn’t do for a friend, no matter what was asked. When he does things for people, he expects nothing in return.”

Those attributes also explain the success Bergman achieved during his 15-year stint on the NFLRA’s Board of Directors, 15 of which were as union president. Jeff Pash, NFL executive vice president/general counsel, recalls the positive spirit Bergman promoted when negotiating a collective bargaining agreement.

“He never made things personal,” Pash said. “He always understood that at the end of the negotiation, we were going to be back together again, we were going to be working closely with one another and the relationship we were going to have once the negotiations concluded was more substantial and more long lasting than whatever was going on when we were tussling over pay and benefits and working conditions, pensions and things like that.”

It just hasn’t been the same in the NFL this season without Bergman. And that’s a definite loss for the league. But Bergie has his priorities. Nothing matters to him now but looking after his wife of 41 years.

“This is the second time for her,” Bergman said. “At 40 years old, she had breast cancer and now she has a different type of cancer. No one should have to go through this. But she’s a fighter and she’s highly motivated.”

In addition to Jeff, Beth Anne has their three sons — Beau, Brett and Brock — offering support as well.

Bergie notified the league Aug. 31 that he plans to retire after the 2022 season. But there may be another Bergman on the NFL roster someday. Brett, 34, a line-of-scrimmage official in the Big Ten Conference, has aspirations of becoming an NFL official one day. To say the least, this family has meant a great deal to officiating at the highest level, starting when Jerry Bergman worked his first game in 1966.

“When you walk out onto the field as an official, you’ve got to have a lot of confidence,” said Steve Freeman, a longtime NFL official who also played in the league. “Jeff just walks out there and he’s got everything under control.”

The post NFL Line Judge Jeff Bergman is All Business appeared first on Referee.com.

I was the umpire-in-chief behind home plate during a tournament game when an 11-year-old boy hit a pop fly to right-center field. The base umpire was in the proper position to observe the play. The center fielder and right fielder crossed each other’s paths as the ball came down. Both the base umpire and I thought the right fielder caught the ball, but when we looked at the center fielder, he had the ball in his right hand. Did he catch it or not?

The base umpire called time and motioned me out to the infield to discuss the situation. Meanwhile, the batter was on first base and his firstbase coach began screaming at me to “make a decision.” Very calmly, I told the coach to relax, that everything would be straightened out in a fair manner. He continued to loudly voice his opinion.

Finally, as the chief umpire, I made my decision. I told the base umpire to ask the center fielder if he caught the ball or picked it up. At this point, the coach went ballistic, screaming, “You can’t do that!”

From there, it was all downhill for him. The coach lost perspective and composure. Naturally, I had no choice but to remove him from the field of play. Seconds later, the base umpire returned with the verdict. The young center fielder told him, “I picked the ball up from the ground.”

If only the coach would have waited five seconds before vehemently protesting. His player was safe at first, but he was ejected. Some of you may think I took a big chance with the decision I made. Well, I don’t. As adults who have witnessed more of the darker side of human nature, we often forget about the innocence of youth.

Fortunately, as a teacher, I have worked with children of this age group for many years. I have often observed their purity and intrinsic honesty in the classroom. It is a joy to know real innocence exists as our youth continue to set examples for adults.

On another occasion, I was officiating a one-day wrestling tournament. Tournaments are often sponsored by a high school or a state high school association. There were fans from two schools in particular that were at each other’s throats throughout the entire event. It so happened I was assigned to officiate the 171-pound championship bout in which the participants were from the two schools involved in all of the unsporting comments toward each other. Increasing the stakes, the single match would determine which school would win the tournament.

The first two periods of the match went as smoothly as an official could ever want, without any questionable or tough calls. I wish I could say the same for the third period. The wrestler who had the choice of position at the start of the third period selected the top position. At the whistle, the wrestlers maneuvered into a tangled position on the mat. Without realizing it, the top wrestler locked hands around the bottom man’s body, which is a technical violation with one point awarded to the opponent. As soon as I hand-gestured the infraction while kneeling on the mat, the bottom man quickly switched his opponent and placed him on his back. Then his adversary reversed him, placing him on his back as well. The flurry of moves continued until the end of the period with the score tied, 14-14.

The wrestlers would get a minute’s rest and then wrestle three one-minute periods, unless a wrestler was pinned any time during the overtime action. It was about 15 seconds into the rest period when my assistant official asked, “Bill, did you indicate locked hands?”

“Yep.”

“Did you award the point?”

“Nope.”

“Are you going to, Bill?”

“No, I’m going to eat the point. If I award it now, all hell would break loose in the gym. Remember, the fans of each team have been screaming at each other all day long. Awarding the point now would cause a riot in the house. We’ll let the match play itself out and pray the right wrestler wins.”

“OK, Bill, it’s your call.” Thank God, the correct wrestler did come out the victor.

In reality, although I made an incorrect decision, I felt it was the right call to make at that point in time.

Bill Welker, EdD, is a retired sports columnist and educator in Wheeling, W.Va. He officiated high school baseball and wrestling for over 25 years.

The post No Wake Zone appeared first on Referee.com.

Pam Young has been a fixture in Chicago’s amateur sports officiating scene during the five decades since.

Young was a first-year physical education teacher at Carl Schurz High School on Chicago’s north side when federal legislators passed Title IX of the Education Amendments. That national law protects the civil rights of students by prohibiting discrimination based on gender in any educational programs or activities that receive federal funding. It was like a software update that prompted a reboot of America’s sports culture.

“The significance of Title IX was beyond enormous,” said Young, who will embark on her 48th season as an official whenever COVID-19 restrictions loosen and sanctioned sporting events in Illinois resume. “It presented a realm of abundant participation for females in athletics. We women and girls had the same access to funding and resources for athletics as men and boys.

“When girls’ sports started in Chicago Public Schools in 1974, I started coaching girls’ basketball, volleyball and track,” said Young, who competed in those three sports while completing her P.E. degree at DePaul University. “We had all these girls (at Schurz) who wanted to play these sports, but no one else wanted to coach them. Female athletes playing on school teams needed coaches and officials to work their games.”

Young did what she could to fill those voids by stepping into the coaching and officiating realms. Being active in athletics from her childhood into her college years, she parlayed those days of competition into illustrious careers blowing whistles as a teacher, coach and official.

At the recommendation of a teaching colleague, she started officiating basketball in 1973. She added track and field in 1974, then volleyball in 1975. Given her playing days and teaching responsibilities, officiating seemed a natural next step in her athletics evolution, but she ventured into it to as a way of managing her time.

“I worked at Johnson Products (a company that manufactured African- American hair-care goods) when I was in high school and college, so I was used to working until 5 or 6 o’clock,” Young said. “When I began teaching, my workday ended at 3 p.m. I had all this time on my hands. John Reed, another P.E. teacher at Schurz, suggested I look into refereeing basketball.”

Young followed Reed’s advice and secured her license from the Illinois High School Association (IHSA), but her first games were not within the friendly confines of a gymnasium with grade school kids. Instead, she made her officiating debut working a men’s summer league on the outdoor asphalt courts of Chicago’s Cabrini-Green Housing Project, the capital of a roughand- tumble neighborhood immediately northwest of downtown.

“In the 1970s, we teachers were not getting any of our salary during the summer, so I needed a job during those months,” Young said. “Working those summer league games was brutal, but I learned how to officiate. Several of those teams had gangbangers playing, and the games didn’t always start on time, so we had to manage the games with a lot of common sense. There was one way into the court and one way out. I wasn’t scared, but the men with whom I worked protected me when they had to.”

A native Chicagoan born and raised on the city’s south side, Young grew up under the watchful eyes of parents who modeled and instilled discipline and detail. Her mother and father — an educator and police officer, respectively — encouraged her to keep her horizons broad while keeping her focus narrow.

“They stressed integrity and perseverance along with a good work ethic,” Young said. “They taught me I could achieve my goals if I put in the necessary work. Nothing was off limits as long as I was willing to stick to it, regardless of the obstacles I faced.”

They also encouraged her love for basketball in an unmistakable manner, one that made the Young house a favorite community hangout.

“My father installed a full-length basketball court in our backyard, so our house became the focal point of the neighborhood,” Young said. “My parents didn’t mind, and neighborhood parents knew where their kids were. My friends would come over and play past nighttime because we had lights in our yard.”

That parental upbringing proved priceless after Young started college. At DePaul, she initiated her list of firsts that she would continue over the next 40 years, starting with being the university’s first Black cheerleader. When she joined the faculty at Schurz High School three months after accepting her college degree, she did so as the school’s first Black female P.E. teacher. Though she was young at the time, she knew how to hold her own with students and peers.

“DePaul taught me how to be a teacher, and the nuns and my mother prepared me to deal with challenging children who presented problems in the classroom,” Young said. “I could not accept any kind of disrespect from students since my parents and teachers did not accept it from me. I wasn’t too much older than the seniors I taught, so I could relate to them in some respects, but I always maintained that role of authority.”

Young spent nine years at Schurz before transferring to Nicholas Senn High School in 1981. For the next 31 years, she taught P.E., health and drivers’ education before retiring from teaching in 2012. She estimates she taught more than 8,000 students in her 40-year career. One of those students was Valerie Spann, a 1989 Senn graduate who played college basketball at Xavier University in Cincinnati.

“When I was in high school, Ms. Young was the only female referee I saw,” said Spann, who capped a 15-year stint as a girls’ basketball coach last season. “It was good to see her on the basketball court being strongminded and not allowing male coaches — or anyone else — to disrespect her.

“She inspired a lot of us young ladies to become women who were leaders and filled positions of authority. We saw in her a woman controlling the game without being intimidated or afraid of anything, and that had a big impact on us.”

What Spann gleaned from Young is what Young gained from her mentors, Bertha Buchanan and Janet Jackson. Those women officiated Chicago Public League girls’ basketball in the 1970s, with Buchanan preceding Young as the first Black female to work Illinois state finals in that sport.

Young’s foray into those men’s leagues portended future work at Cabrini-Green. When the Midnight Basketball League started its eight-year 1990s run in Chicago, she was one of its most well-known officials, largely because of her gender. By that time, she had the chops, the thick skin and the steely nerves to work that action with unflappable confidence.

“There weren’t too many officials who wanted to work those games,” Young said. “I wanted to work, and I knew what kind of environment I was working in.”

As Young sought to increase her officiating profile, she connected with some great officials. In the mid- 1980s, she met Nate Humphrey and Malcolm Hemphill, two pillars of the Metropolitan Officials Association (MOA), a predominantly African- American group based in Chicago. She did not need a second chance to make a positive first impression.

“Pam was speaking at a city-sponsored basketball event, and I was thoroughly impressed by her presentation,” said Hemphill, who was on the Big Ten’s men’s basketball officiating roster at that time. “I learned she was an official who had run track and played basketball in college.

“Nate Humphrey one day asked me to go with him to watch her work, and she stood out to me. She had tremendous court presence. There were some things she needed to hone, but she was receptive to constructive criticism. I was certain she would be a high-quality official and achieve terrific success.”

Young joined the MOA and became one of its most reliable members. Hemphill, a co-founder of the MOA, recalls she was “quick to volunteer for whatever needed to be done. She’s always been ready to be a contributor even when she didn’t hold a leadership office. She never shied away from helping the association improve.”

Young eventually became the first female the MOA voted to serve as its president, and she has filled that role four times. Throughout its history, the MOA has trained and promoted African-American officials for the highest levels of athletics throughout the Midwest and the nation. The group helped provide Young with another novel opportunity to perfect her craft.

“My first college camp was coordinated by Richie Weiler (longtime Big Ten referee who worked five Final Fours) in the 1980s,” she said. “Several of the MOA men were attending, and there was no camp nearby for female officials at that time. I wanted to start moving up the ladder and get into collegiate officiating, so I applied for Weiler’s camp. I was the only female among all the campers, but I believed the training there would be a tremendous benefit to my career.”

Being on the road working in front of assigners and evaluators added more pressure on her, but she did not buckle under the weight. The pursuit of excellence instilled by her parents found reinforcement in the expectations of the MOA.

“In those camp settings, we MOA members understood we had to be 10 times better,” Young said. “We had to be professional at all times; we had to know the rules; and our mechanics had to be sharp.”

Young climbed to the top of that aforementioned ladder. She has worked every level of women’s basketball, from junior college to Division I. She drew her first D-I assignment for a game at Northeastern Illinois University during its days in the Mid-Continent Conference (now called the Summit League). Her memories of that day center on what occurred after the game.

“Ray Piagentini, another one of my mentors, was my observer, and he had some pointed critiques for me,” Young said. “I didn’t mind because I wanted to improve, and he helped train me.”

When Young left Schurz, she also closed her coaching career. She became the director of athletics at Senn while keeping her normal P.E. teaching schedule. She managed the added administrative duties in stride.

“She was organized with her tasks and brought empathy when working with coaches,” said former Senn principal Richard Norman. “She advocated for fair distribution of resources for the school, and she did all this while serving as chair of the P.E. department and teaching a full load.

“Athletics are such an important component of education. Being responsible for eligibility, equipment and record-keeping can get complicated, but Pam handled all those things and made them look easy.”

Part of managing an athletics department was ensuring Senn’s contests had officials. That paved the way for Young to become Chicago Public Schools (CPS) first assigner for high school girls’ basketball.

“Coaches would get officials for their games,” Young said. “There was no assigner for girls’ basketball. Many of the coaches for high schools on the north side of Chicago wanted me to get officials for their girls’ games because they trusted me and I knew the officials. That’s how I started assigning girls’ games.”

Young also became the first CPS assigner for volleyball. As the coordinator of officials for two sports in the nation’s third-largest school district, her portfolio comprised more than 75 high schools throughout Chicago. She coordinated all this without the efficiency of today’s technology.

“The most important aspect for me was making sure each game had officials who could handle that caliber of competition,” Young said of her primary assigning philosophy. “Nate Humphrey taught me to take care of the officials. He told me, ‘They will go to the end of the earth if you pay them, don’t cheat them out of anything and be professional toward them.’ The officials I’ve assigned throughout the years know I have their backs.”

Finding quality officials to work her games gave Young a deeper vested interest in the quality of women and men she hired. She did her part to raise that quality by training officials.

“Pam’s top-notch as a trainer,” said Steve Alexander, Young’s successor as assigner for CPS girls’ basketball and a current assigner for volleyball and girls’ hoops in Chicago’s south suburbs. “Her ability to break down rules and teach them is among the best I’ve ever seen.

“One of her most substantial contributions to officiating is her recruitment of younger officials. She’s been influential in getting a number of former CPS student-athletes to become officials, then she trains them very well. That’s helped the level of officiating overall in the Chicago area.”

Training is an expansive aspect of Young’s professional persona, for sports officials and beyond. ASEP (now known as the Human Kinetics Coach Education) further cemented Young’s training prowess when she earned its certification in 1999. At the behest of Calvin Davis, former CPS sports administration director, she became an ASEP-certified trainer to teach coaches who had no former academic instruction in education.

She has also been an IHSA-certified clinician and rules interpreter for volleyball and basketball for more than 30 years.

Her longevity in officiating and education has spawned honors, awards and recognition reflective of prolonged prosperity. Young has been inducted into four halls of fame, named official of the year in basketball and volleyball, and named both teacher of the year and athletics director of the year. Despite the merit of those accolades, they rarely are a topic of conversation with her.

“Pam has always had tenacity and a sense of confidence, but she’s never been boastful,” Hemphill said. “You would have to pry her list of achievements out of her. She’s earned all of them because of her commitment but maintains a good sense of humility about them.”

Some trailblazers have the luxury of looking behind them to see who is walking in their footsteps. When Young checks her rearview mirror, she smiles at the crowd of women whom she has trained and are following her.

“The MOA has had more females working state finals games in Illinois than any other association in the state,” Young said. “I feel very good knowing I had some meaningful contribution to their training.”

Shelia Ashley fits that description. With multiple city championship games and state finals appearances under her belt, she is one of the most accomplished officials in the Chicago area. She credits Young’s advancement as the origin of her own.

“Pam’s experience working boys’ and men’s basketball paved the way for more women like me to work that level of basketball,” said Ashley, a veteran official of 33 years. “She helped us prepare for what to expect, and that inside knowledge was very helpful. She wanted us to have every advantage that would help us succeed so people would see us as competent officials instead of female referees.”

Basketball may be the sport in which Young has compiled the most acclaim, but her work in volleyball need not take a back seat. Her ascents in both sports mirror each other, proven by her becoming the first official to work the Chicago city championships in volleyball and basketball during the same school year twice. While she has a slightly greater affinity for officiating basketball, she gives volleyball the edge in degree of difficulty.

“I enjoy working basketball a little more than volleyball because of the cardio workout,” Young said. “The constant transition of running up and down the court gives that extra benefit opposed to standing.

“Volleyball is harder to officiate than basketball because you have to judge every single contact of the ball in a split second. If you’re thinking about the last hit, another one happened. Basketball gives you a second or two to process what you see, but volleyball doesn’t afford you that time.”

Of the three sports for which she has her license, her work in track and field may not shine as bright, but it is no less demanding.

“Each event in track has its unique set of rules, and officials have to know every one of them,” Young said. “The rules in track are very explicit. There isn’t the amount of subjective judgment regarding a violation as there is in basketball or volleyball.

“Officiating a track meet is more about game management. If you have a major meet like a high-level invitational or sectional qualifier, you may have up to 20 officials. They are responsible for lane inspections, hurdle setups and equipment checks.”

After a coaching tenure at Schurz that saw her teams capture city championships and compete for state titles, she carved a niche as one of Illinois’ most credible track and field officials, a reputation that crossed beyond the boundaries of Chicago.

“When she traveled to various sites throughout Illinois, she went to work in areas that were dominated by men,” said Anthony Rainey, a former state title track and field coach at Luther South High School in Chicago. “People wanted to get at her, but she didn’t let that cause her to waver. She maintained her commitment to being an excellent official.”

That steadfastness has been Young’s defining trait, Rainey says of the woman he met at an MOA meeting in 1976. He noted how the high caliber of character she portrays has trickled to dozens of officials who have emerged after her in all the sports she officiates.

“As a woman and a woman of color, she carried the torch for two segments of the culture,” said Rainey, who also served as the director of athletics and head coach of the football and boys’ basketball teams at Luther South. “I’m not sure she realized the full significance of that. She was sort of a crusader who declared women can step into this arena and be successful.

“Since she established herself on the officiating landscape, more Black women are doing track and field as well as men’s basketball and boys’ basketball. We’re seeing more Black women and men doing volleyball, which is a huge shift because for years, most volleyball officials were not of color. Pam laid that groundwork years ago. When you look at where our society is today, Pam is a pioneer far ahead of her time.”

Although Young may not have too many more unchecked items on her officiating to-do list, she is not ready to walk away. Half a century of service is well within reach, and she has the health and vigor to attain that milestone. Her career has unfolded far beyond what she imagined at its start. “If I could go back in time,” Young said, “I’d tell my first-year self, ‘It gets better! It will get better … you will get better at doing this.’

“I started officiating at a good time. I love what I do and am doing what I love. I’m planning to work the next season, and I’m glad people still want me to work.”

Marcel Kerr officiates high school and college football, basketball, volleyball and softball. He lives in Chicago.

The post Five Decades of Pam Young appeared first on Referee.com.

But I also have another passion that has come to the forefront during the COVID-19 pandemic. I am a physician’s assistant working in the emergency room in San Jose, Calif., working 10-hour shifts dealing with the chaos that comes from fighting a new virus. Never in a million years did I think the world would stop and focus its attention on the frontline and how to battle COVID-19.

And while there is risk involved in my job, I am there to help people, so I worry less about myself because I am there for my patients. In the back of my head, there is always a small concern that I could contract COVID-19 and how would I battle it. But when I’m at work, that isn’t my primary focus.

In order to get my work done in the hospital, I can rely on a lot of the things I have experienced as a referee to guide me. One is communication. I must communicate with my patients that their health and survival is the utmost priority. It is the same with players. I have their best interest and safety in mind, and I must communicate that effectively to them.

The second thing, I must work under pressure. I take in a lot of information from a variety of sources and I must make high-stress decisions that are best for the game or the patient.

However, the stress is a little bit different between the two jobs. The beauty with sports is they are a live event. You get one snapshot and have to make decisions in the moment. With medicine, there are many more tools at my disposal to provide care for the patients for a variety of diseases in a more stable environment.

COVID-19, however, has been a challenge and a real test. At the beginning, every week there were new procedures, new information from the CDC (Center for Disease Control) and new information from China. There was a high learning curve and we continue to be students of COVID- 19 as more clinical research and data become available. In some ways it is dangerous and very unknown, but in many ways it is intriguing new medicine and fosters an opportunity to learn and grow together as a community, society and country.

Now we rely on our experiences. That is both true in the hospital and on the field. We learn from our experiences, reflect back on what has worked for patients or other people around us, and it has been beautiful to watch the medical community come together and be forthcoming on what has been working in other hospitals, communities and countries. We are figuring out pathways to take to get better patient outcomes. In the same sense, as referees we may have gone about making a certain call that led to a positive match or environment. We feed off what happened in the past and implement it again in similar situations to get the same positive outcome.

I’ve also learned a lot about myself over the past few months. I’ve learned patience and prioritization. People are battling for their lives and there is no higher importance and priority than life itself. Wait your turn, wait for your hobbies and other activities to shine through because more important aspects of life — literally life — are on the line. There may be fewer cases, but it is just as dangerous and deadly. We are ready for potential spikes and curves, but we are anxious and hoping it doesn’t occur.

At the same time, I have been able to take the time to reflect on what is important in life — your friends and your family. Share moments with them because you never know whose life is at risk at any time.

This pandemic has shown me that I have many tools at my disposal. There are different ways and paths to deal with situations. I can always search for solutions and answers in many different ways. So being resourceful has been something I have strived for and learned from both officiating and this new pandemic.

Together, we will get through this. And when we do, I can’t wait to be around my crew, and together take the steering wheel on the pitch. I look forward to the interaction with each other and with the players to put forward a beautiful game.

Katja Koroleva is a FIFA international soccer referee for the Professional Referee Organization (PRO) and debuted in 2013. She was selected to work the 2019 Women’s World Cup in France, as well as the 2017 NCAA Women’s D-I College Cup Final Four. She is also a physician’s assistant with a master’s degree in medical science from Salus University in Elkins Park, Pa.

The post Fighting The Pandemic With Skills Learned As a Referee appeared first on Referee.com.

If the quality of the game
is unchanged (or even
better) without fans
there to scream at the
coaches, officials and
players, is that behavior
really necessary when the
games resume?

Then, it happened.

The governor and the state department of education started putting a halt to athletic competition throughout the state. The Centers for Disease Control began issuing advisories and making recommendations as to public gatherings in light of the coronavirus pandemic. The questions and rumors began flying around the games going on that second day. Was the season over? What would the NMAA do?

Well, the games went on. Upon directives from the state and the CDC, we allowed 100 people in the facility to continue the games and crown champions. Those 100 people included the two teams playing and the two teams for the next game, the referees and essential tournament staff. No fans. Limited media. Alternate referees were sent home (so we kept our fingers crossed that none of the referees would get injured).

The first game on that third day was surreal. I walked with the officiating crew (incidentally, only two officials, as one was stuck in traffic and we had sent the alternates home) down the ramp and the only noises that could be heard were the HVAC unit and the squeaking of sneakers on the basketball court. No player introductions. No national anthem. We all stood there, looking at one another, wondering how to start a game without the fanfare that normally precedes it. I looked at the crew chief and said, “Let’s go.” (For those of you wondering, the third official did show up at the start of the second quarter.)

The game began and the lack of fans did not bother anyone. After the opening tip, it was just basketball. The kids on the floor played with the same heart and intensity as if there were 14,000 fans in the stands at University of New Mexico Arena. Then, the first whistle blew and … nothing happened. The referee went to the table, reported and we played on. The same thing happened over and over for three days. Coaches were coaching their players. Players were listening to their coaches. Referees were calling fouls and violations. Everyone was having fun and enjoying the sanctity and purity that we once knew and loved about high school sports.

Throughout the games, officials would make a call and if coaches had a question about it, they asked — calmly and respectfully. In huddles during timeouts, coaches just talked to their players, without raised voices. The behavior of coaches on the sidelines from Thursday through Saturday was in stark contrast to what we witnessed on Tuesday and Wednesday. Perhaps they did not feel the need to be overly emotional for the benefit of their fans.

Officials were more focused on the task at hand (the 10 kids on the floor) instead of coaches out of their boxes and the unruly fans deriding them from the stands. They were able to blow the whistle, and effectively communicate with coaches, players, partners and the table crew. You could routinely see during the last three days of the tournament coaches and officials smiling and laughing, players enjoying basketball as the sport they have loved since they were little and everyone truly focusing on the sport they love. While the absence of fans was sad for the kids, it gave us all perspective about the negatives that sometimes come with the cheers and jeers of spectators during games.

My hope is the absence of sport throughout the world gives us all a moment to gain perspective and do a “gut check” as to the kind of fans we are at contests. If the quality of the game is unchanged (or even better) without fans there to scream at the coaches, officials and players, is that behavior really necessary when the games resume?

What we learned that week in March, among many lessons, is the concept of “essential personnel.” For a game to go on in any sport, we need a couple of teams with their coaches, someone to adjudicate the contest and someone to keep score. Everything beyond that is just extra. If we take out teams, coaches or officials, the games cease to exist. What we learned that week was, in the end, the game does not really need fans to exist. It is the fans who desperately need the sports they love.

Dana Pappas is the commissioner of officials/deputy director for the New Mexico Activities Association.

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