PREP FOOTBALL

PREP FOOTBALL

Referees are role models, too

Fanfare:

I was reading the story on one of my childhood friends, Youngstown Christian football coach Brian Marrow, and his calling to coach.

I grew up with his family and we were kind of interchangeable with my home being theirs and vice versa. When you talk about sports, we always talk about the coach but there is another viable profession that many people overlook which I have done for many years — officiating!

There are no advertisements or any other media reaching out, you have to be in the network to be educated and I hope this gets across to some aspiring young man or woman.

The men and women in the stripes are role models too. With the strapped economic times, if you love sports at any level you should consider putting on the stripes and see the game from a totally new perspective, and make a few dollars while doing it.

Around 12 years ago I was a armchair quarterback, sitting in the stands saying, “What did that referee see?”

Well, I now know and understand what he saw and how that official came to his unbiased opinion.

I started officiating in Fort Hood, Texas, following on in Korea and even in Iraq for the soldiers while deployed. I now do games in Virginia, Washington D.C. and Maryland. It’s an excellent therapeutic way to stay in shape and see some of the greatest games played with a front-row seat.

Officials are setting the example to the young on the field and what they see may carry on to their lives off the field. Remember — some of these kids come from broken homes with no male role models, so when they see officials wearing those stripes it says a lot.

The art of officiating is under-represented by African-Americans. In 1982, there were only 17 African-American officials who had made it into any of the professional or major league sports. Unfortunately, I cannot give you numbers or percentage of current officials’ statistics but look at the sporting events you attend and see who is out there on the field.

With that in mind, officiating doesn’t stop when the last game of the season ends. It takes a lot of dedication. Officials are often attending clinics and going to conferences months before the seasons start. Many officials use their own money to attend these functions. Officially, football games start at the end of August in most states, but many officials are in clinics in May, learning of rule changes, penalty enforcement and proper implementation of rules.

There are approximately 95 rules in a given sport that have to be properly enforced, and with no help of irate fans, frustrated players and screaming coaches, the official has to make the correct call in a fraction of a second.

So here is my philosophy on officiating:

Officials are also human and they may miss a call; they may also not implement a rule but enforce the spirit of the rule. Participants may miss a pass, miss a basket, travel or have illegal motion. Why? Because they are also human!

When an official misses a call, remember the basket you missed, the pass you dropped. It all pans out in the end. But just like those minority coaches, we need officials at all levels of play also.

Delmas Stubbs