Young Refs at tournaments

Went to Chanute today, very good and organized tournament , on time and setup well. But the only thing im seeing and this is a big problem with the young refs not doing their job correctly. Ive seen many mistakes thats cost my kids and others kids matches due to the lack of these young kids reffing just really not caring or not totally knowing what they are doing, they are actually kinda lazy. do they have to go through training for this ? Because when your talking about your kid finishing 5th or worst cause of 2 badly called matches, when they coulda got 1st or at least 2nd . it makes a big deal to me and other parents. Any body have any insite on this?

Don't waist your time on trying to fix this! That's the best advice you can get. If you do, in the end you'll just be disappointed. You might as well just sit in your corner and never protest a call beacuse the ref will just say " it's a judgement call." Then no matter how diplomatic or accomodating you are the ref will not change his mind even if he is wrong. You could bring out a book and show the rules to him and it still won't make a difference and by this time you probably have already been warned and the moment you say anything you'll get kicked out ( depending on your status with the district your in). You can get the head ref but he's probably buddies with the ref your trying to convince and in the end there not going to turn on there own kind. In fact just today i had a ref go out of his way to come to my corner and intentionaly try to get me to say something so he could kick me out. If I followed a ref to the middle of the mat and provoked him after he walked away and tried to avoid conflict I would be kicked out but the ref can do whatever he wants and USAWK will back him 100%.
Believe me someone who has been through it all. Sit in your corner watch them make mistakes bite your tounge and when you go out of state enjoy the great refs that are not affiliated with your local chapter of USA wrestling. The abuse of the rules amongst refs is staggering and every year it gets worse. Say what you will but I say never leave the match in the hands of a ref. Go out and take care of business and get out while you still have your coaches card. I love this sport but sometimes we take more steps backwards than forwards when it comes to this problem. Just my thoughts and I'm sure everyone has there own opinion. I will say for every bad ref there is usally a good one right around the corner, but everyone remembers the bad ones.

I seen a head ref over turn a call today that changed the winner of a match!!
It was awesome!

you mean that they aren't all evil? here's an idea, become a ref!

jason & CBRs Dad.....3 words for ya....
GO GET CERTIFIED...

The refs give alot of personnal time let alone taking off from their jobs. For alot of them it is their passion for the love of the sport. Many were wrestlers themselves. Until you walk a mile in their shoes, PLEASE....do not bad mouth the refs. Without them the whistle wouldn't blow, and your son wouldn't wrestle! IF you don't care to get certified, go buy some popcorn!

HIS MAMA, You know refs do generly love this sport but this is not something they do for free. Thier not bell ringers donating time without being paid. They do get paid now I'm not saying they don't love the sport and what they do isn't a hard. But they are being paid which leaves the jobs they do an open to critisism. Like it or not. And some are better than others.

And far as most all were refs wrestlers I think at this point that myth sets right there with all exotic dancers are putting themselves thru Law School, Med school

It is a job that they get paid for. Every job I have had has an evaluation process every year and if your doing good you get to keep your job and maybe a raise. If you suck you get demoted or fired. Why should this job be any different?!

I was at Chanute today as well and I'll bet there was around 150 "bad" calls, easily. Can you believe that? 150 "bad" calls! There was 5 age groups, 6U 8U 10U 12U & 14U and I don't remember the final bout numbers but let's say each age group had 100 matches. That's 500 total matches. Now let's say each match goes 3 periods. Thats 1,500 periods*. Now let's assume that a Ref makes an average of 3 call each period (I think this is a low number but it's a round number). We are now at 4,500 "judgement" calls in a tournament. And we have already established that 150 of them were bad so that makes the ref's correct 96% of the time.

Maybe it's just me but I'll take 96% all day long, even if my kid ends up on the 4% side from time to time. My kids just started wrestling last year so I don't have years of expirence to draw from but I would like to say thanks too all of the tournament directors, the table workers, the towel tappers, concession workers, and especially the refs. Without you there is no place for my kids to wrestle each weekend.

Theres no such thing as a bad bad call? Why ever had your son wrestling a match and ref gives point and in your own mind you go "Well cool that one went are way" and 3 weeks later your calling the ref to the table and asking "How can you give that kid points for that Judgment call my butt" Some you get, some get you. And it'll never be the way you need it when you get that call. I teach my kids "You never leave it up to a REF they'll screw you everytime." If you lose a match by 1 cause you didn't get the escape work hard and maybe next time it won't be that close.

Thank you Shak!

You know who complains about bad refs? Poor coaches with average kids....its always the ref....not the kid or the coach. Grow up and get better!

Thumbs up!

While I do agree you should never allow the match to stay close enough that 1 bad call decides the match. My concern with inexperienced refs is injuries. Today at JOCO I watched a kids leg get torqued past 90 degrees and the ref never called potentially dangerous, he just watched it. I also saw the same ref watch a kid stand up with another kid figure foured around the head(with his head toward the mat),not only was this not ruled potentially dangerous and stopped but the kids head was driven into the mat pile driver style. Not only was that not stopped even then the ref watched until he decided 2 points control.Unfortunately, the only good out of that scenario was niether wrestler was on my team. This same ref last year watched 1 of my wrestlers get his leg torqued on a single until his ACL tore. At least he learned,right? I have this ref this year,I will run out&stop the match myself if there is an injury in waiting.

what makes this job different than the one you do currently is this.

- you applied
- you qualified
- you were chosen
- you suck
- YOU ARE REPLACED
with me so far??? your words not mine, btw. i was called earlier in the week by the head referee at chanute to come ref. i had a previous engagement, could not. so they scrambled, to find replacements.
still with me???
here it comes, THERE ARE FEW REPLACEMENTS, unlike your prestigious job where someone is waiting in the wings to step in. after reffing for 1 year, i will tell you it's tough, at times, but like anything else you get better with experience.

how many of you, are better at your job after 10 years than you were when you started???

i wouldn't mind having and evaluation, but are you all willing to pay an extra $5 to $10 per entry fee to cover the expense of that salary? maybe each club in the state could throw in from their profits to cover it. seriously think about that, you would need a head ref, plus an auditor at every tournament, every weekend.

how about we promote people who have never been a referee or a wrestler to be the auditor. isn't that the way your job is? don't you all just love it, at your job, when you get a new boss, 25 yrs old, fresh out of college, never worked a day in his life. don't you like it when a customer calls and chews your a**! maybe it should be like the Major League Baseball all-star balloting, the fans vote, no flaws in that system. How about Kansas Wrestling go out and recruit the BCS they get it right all the time. don't they?

great discussions here, please keep coming up with good solutions, contact will cokeley (chairman of the Referee Educational Forum and Evaluation and Review committee), and don't forget to attend the state meeting and place your votes.

all kidding aside here people, i do think we need some sort of education, evaluation, and promotion process, but i haven't seen anyone including cokeley do anything but bring it up. let's here some ideas that will work, let's put the whole thing in motion. stop complaining, stop waiting for someone else to take over, step up, and take it on. if you settle for what you have, you deserve what you get.

dang it! she said she was going to enroll, right after her plastic surgery!!! well then, i'm going to go to the casino and give THEM my $$$ from now on. at least all of THEIR profits go to education.

there's the good ol' HA beeson, i thought you went soft on me. I saw you posting on a ranking thread, us HAs don't care about rankings. right pres?

I agree with HEADUP!
The forum has been a lil bland lately...
Its nice to see some good Ol Chad Spice this last week or so!
Welcome back HA Beeson!
Lol

I have always thought that if a ref makes a call that impacts you kid wining or losing, that kid should have not let it be that close.

However when you are talking about two very good kids wrestling each other that may not always apply, but it is the same for everybody.

A quote from Goddard this weekend:

"Yea I think I screwed up and made a pretty bad call"

From a younger ref, and it didn't impact the outcome because the kids went ahead and took care of it on his own.

We are ALL human....Refs, coaches, kids, and parents!! Everyone makes mistakes. Yesterday at goddard, a coach asked for the head ref, after a bad call. The ref was young and unsure of the true definition of an escape. The head ref came over explained it to him and the call was overturned..It was the right call.......Now keep one thing in mind, these young refs are the future..look around the mats...some of these guys aren't getting any younger..The young ones will catch on. Local tournaments aren't qualifiers, they are tough practices getting ready for a bigger picture. One bad call isn't the end of the world..I'm just as guilty as the next guy, on questioning a call...just don't loose sleep over it or mull it over and over, learn from it and fix it at the next tournament.

uh most of these KIDS arent old enough to work , probably hung over from a party the night before

dont leave it up to the ref to decide the match if your worried about it. tell your kid to pin his kid and you have no calls to worry about. i had a bad escape call in my sons match. didnt even decide the match but i explained to the ref after the match and he didnt listen. some coaches would keep it going but i let it go after that. many of those refs wont be reffing when it comes down to district and state where it really matters the most anyways.

All I have to say is that some coaches are really really worse than others and we all know that. We have to officiate on average 40 to 60 matches, you think we can get every call right? No, it's virtually impossible. It is true that some ref's are better than others. I try my best and it seems coaches don't appreciate what we do sometimes. Remember you can always sign up next year and be in our shoes. Try coaching your kid more instead of questioning our calls. Being a referee isn't as easy as it looks.

Jason, if you look on the forms page of this website you will find out all the coaches and Athletes who have been suspendeded this last year. You will also find a form to file for an ejected coach. What you will not find is a form to file a complaint for a ref. Furthermore there is no form that tells you how to make a formal complaint on a ref (to the best of my knowledge). you will also find a list of coaches who have a card. What you will not find is a list of refs names. You will also find out that every coach has a background check. What you will not find is a list of refs who passed a background check. this is a system of double standards. We pay these guys as an organization we should expect to hold the refs to the same standards as the coaches.
Idea. Make the refs have an certification # patched on there uniform much like a badge #. Then make a complaint form readily available to the coaches. When the ref gets a certain # of complaints hold him accountable for his performance. Rate him on servicability and post it on the website. I know when I went to hire him for a tournament I would get an idea of what I was hiring. If a ref doesn't get hired much he will know that he needs to step up his game to get a paycheck. Also there are alot of refs who ref for a living. they go from wrestling to basketball to softball and then to football making it a year round job. Solutions are what you want bounce around some ideas to solve the problems

As a tournament director and a coach, I selected the ref I know that typically have good performance.

I also chosen to not hire a couple due to past experiences, not only with me but from watching on the side for years and years.

With some refs they run in a group and some travel together so you get some if you want to or not.

Kyle I have never expected refs to get it right 100% of the time. I have been on that side also in several other sports.

It is the one that consistently blows it and always has conflict. That is why there is a head ref and a tournament director. They each live and learn by who they hire, and like it was said earlier when those that don't get hired will slowly get the hint.

the problem is there are so many tournaments and not so many refs. some tournaments may have to pull some highschool kids to fill in and i think this is good. first if your worried about your kid getting screwed at 6 and 8 under divisions your going to have a long career as a coach. we need these highschool kids to get that experience early on as it helps them look at wrestling in a different manner and also gives them that experience for after highschool. i did ref for one year. my last match was when a coach said i made the dumbest call he had ever seen on a reversal. i asked him to give me a 3 match break and put my shirt on. then he wanted to fight me. yeah thats what i want coaching my kid. i will admit i get onto the refs some but would never push it that far. give the kids a break so they will stay interested in it so we will actually have refs later on. go to oklahoma and texas if you want to see some really bad reffing lol. remember all this kids wrestling is prep work for highschool where it really does matter just a little bit more.

Look under the officials tab for names and refs numbers

I agree that there needs to be a standard or ranking system for refs.

I think it is important to have younger refs or hs kids get their mat time as well buti think it needs to be more at the novice level with at least a 50/50 mix of experienced refs as well.

I used to think the refs officiating my kid weren't very good and I was sure I could do better. So when he graduated, I paid my dues and bought my shirt.Turns out those guys I didn't think were so hot were a whole lot better than I was....its a lot easier to officiate from the stands....you never miss a call from the cheap seats. I know, I made a million of them.

I've been officiating for 15 years now. I didn't start out "young" to begin with so I got some slack from the coaches and crowd because I was older so they figured I was experienced. I also did not start out in kids, which I'm forever grateful because I love officiating and if I had started at the kids' level I'd have quit after the first year. There is much more crowd control in high school.

A year ago, I was thinking about doing some kids officiating on a few Sundays because I thought it would be a good/fun thing to do. But before I made the commitment, I decided to go to a tournament and make sure. My son wrestled and I attended lots of meets as a parent/coach but that was years ago and I wasn't there as an official.

After about 2 hours of just watching, I decided I could not officiate a kids tournament. It was just too crazy. Small mat space, way too many people mat side, screaming that was not only loud, but really close to being insane. And very unskilled wrestling. I realized, yes, it was just like I remembered when I was there last a couple of decades ago.

I honestly do not know how you can find new guys to officiate at this level. Young guys do so because they are recently out of wrestling and love the sport and think it is a way to stay involved and earn a little money. They really don't know how to handle the environment and while they probably would be fine if left alone, they aren't left alone, so they often fail. They are badgered and pestered by folks who are looking out for their kids, which is fine, but its just too much negative energy.

New kids officials don't have a structured mentoring program or even a short course in "how to officiate" at least as far as I know. At the HS level, we have an annual clinic and a couple meetings and I think at that level there is more one-on-one help available. I know I was taken under the wing of a couple veterans my first few years and they helped me a lot. I knew the rules (that's the easy part) but applying them is a lot harder than it looks. There is an awfully lot of gray in the black and white.

If you really wanted to help new officials, somebody in your organization ought to set up a required annual clinic and require attendance of all new (1-3 year) officials. I think the local 3-2 baseball umps have to do this. You go to a "mini-camp" and are taught the basics. I'm talking 8 to 16 hours, not just a rules review. Some on-mat time, some situations, some evaluations.

And, what all the fans and coaches need to understand is that the hardest officiating is when you have unskilled wrestlers. The easiest is the state champion caliber guys...they don't do dumb things, they finish their moves, they don't cry, they don't flip out, etc. They just wrestle. When I do middle school matches I have to call those much differently than the high school matches because the wrestling is so much less skilled that I have to wait on every call to make sure it is what it seems to me. With kids, it is rarely what it seems to be. A kid that you think has control doesn't even know what he's got but he's just fallen into a position. "Reaction time" is at a snail's pace with kids, but in HS its a flash. My hat is off to those few individuals that can bounce back and forth between kids and higher levels.

I've seen dozens of guys that got into officiating and then got ran out only because the fans/coaches could not give them the time to learn the trade. They expected perfection out of the box. That just isn't reality. But, again, if there is a big problem out there, the solution may be the clinic/camp approach which I'm sure would work but somebody needs to make it a requirement.

Bob Ford
Official

Good post Scott. I feel sorry for those wrestlers that never get to experience high school wrestling. After nine years chasing the kids circuit as a parent/coach, I finally get to set back and be a supportive father at high school wrestling events.

As far as young officials, I didn't read all the posts from this particular thread, but I think they are vital to the sport of wrestling. They aren't going to be tremendous officials in the beginning. Give them credit for doing the job, be understanding if they make mistakes, and give them a pat on the back in the hallway and thank them for contributing to the sport. Maybe then they will stick around long enough to become exceptional officials.