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.