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Profiles and stories about officials and people close to officiating.
6 Transcendent Moments for Sports Officials
For some of us, officiating is a vocation, for others it is an avocation. For almost all of us, however, it is a passion that offers feelings of...
Fruits of His Labor
The 44-year-old Julio Rivera- Torres, who now lives in Vancouver, Wash., began life in a small village called San Miguel Del Ojo de Agua...
Dale Scott Redemption
Half sleep-walking through darkness to the refrigerator in his Santo Domingo apartment in the dead of night in January 1986, all Dale Scott wanted...
Officiating is a Family Affair
Nestled between the San Diego Bay and the scenic splendor of the coastal mountain foothills in Southern California are the sprawling sun-kissed expanses of...
5 Minutes With Margaret Domka
Margaret Domka is on the FIFA International Panel of Referees. She is one of a select few officials to ever go onto the FIFA list...
Iowa Wrestling Community Helps Official Get to Championships
In Iowa, wrestling is practically a family affair, almost a religion.
It’s a place where every kid with a little ability and a steely attitude...
Back From The Blindside
Veteran football official Robert Watts
was recently elected president of the Austin (Texas) Football Officials Association (AFOA). It is all part of moving on with...
NCAA Referee Keith Kimble Keeps It All In Perspective
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...
Five Decades of Pam Young
When the U.S. Department of Education leveled the playing field for males and females in 1972 by ratifying Title IX, the agency did more than open doors and...
NFL Line Judge Jeff Bergman is All Business
Just as Jeff Bergman was starting to relax under the soothing stream of warm water that early spring afternoon in 1983, he was startled...
Frank DeFord, Longtime Supporter of Sports Officials, Dies At 78
We at Referee magazine and the National Association of Sports Officials are much saddened by the passing of Frank DeFord. Frank received accolades, honors...
NHL Referee Finds Success as Elite Amateur Golfer
At 7:18 on the morning of June 14, Garrett Rank stood on the 10th tee at Shinnecock Hills Golf Club on Long Island, preparing...
FIFA Referee Mark Geiger
By his own proud admission, the man is a nerd. Conjure images of that wisp of a kid you remember from high school who...
Feats of Clay
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As the always dapper Clay Martin takes his seat on his team’s bench at the Frank Herald...
Marc Of Distinction
He used to sit anonymously in the Silverado High School bleachers in Las Vegas during the mid-2000s, a bookish, kind man who could easily...
‘I’m Still Here’
A boy with hoop dreams, the scope of which he could never have comprehended would one day come to fruition during those halcyon days...
No Wake Zone
I don’t know if Little League Baseball, small-fry wrestling or other youth sports build or reveal character, but I do believe in the innocence of children. That belief...
Yellow Flags to Checkered
In 2005, Dick Kitchens, from the Gold Leaf Football Officials Association in Tifton, Ga., gave then-17-year-old Jeremiah Thalheimer of Tifton a shot at working...
Referee Voices: Bert Smith
As part of the 2021 NASO Sports Officiating Summit @ Home, NCAAM basketball referee Bert Smith detailed for the virtual audience his career path...
It’s Black and White
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ave you ever wondered why officials wear black and white stripes? In the early days of football, referees wore white dress shirts, bow ties...
“Reggie The Ref” Is More Than Just a Nickname
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Nicknames are part of sports. “Hammerin’ Hank.” “The Greek Freak.” “A-Rod.” Sports officials go the same route.
“Reggie the Ref.” Catchy nickname,...
Fighting The Pandemic With Skills Learned As a Referee
As a member of the Professional Referee Organization (PRO), I had the privilege of working the Women’s World Cup in France in 2019. Being...
Ability, Not Disability
will Fried, a basketball official in the Wichita, Kan., area, recently earned a degree in conflict analysis and resolution, which on the surface makes...
Pati Rolf Moved From College Coach to High Level Official and Has Never Looked...
A lime green toy pig, gifted to Pati Rolf by the distraught motorist who accidentally struck her on snowy Minnetonka Boulevard in Hopkins, Minn., nearly 50 years ago, endures all...
