The shortest answer to your question is NO. There really is no precedure to make a complaint about an official. Basically anytime something comes down to judgement which most calls in wrestling are you as a coach have absolutly no say so unless a rule was misapplied. Keep in mind im talking about a technical misapplication of a rule, not an interpretation of a rule. In other words if an official gave 3 near fall points for only a 3 second count, then you could argue. But if the official says he counted to 5 even though he didn't give a visual signal (which he is not required to do) then it will still be 3 points, its now a judgement call.

As far as bad officials are concerned, they tend to work themselves out, if an official gets enough compaints about him, the word gets around, and they stop getting hired for tournaments, however it is very rare that an official is so bad week after week that this becomes the case. In fact many times the complaints go on def ears when the people listening to them find out the coach complaining is doing so over a judgement call, or the coach themsleves doesn't understand the rule.

In either case there is a reason why coaches aren't explicitly allowed to make complaints about officials is because it would open the door for coaches to publicly bash officials and thus compromise the integrity of the whole official core. All the sudden we start seeing complaints of every nature, most of them involving judgement call of course. I think you can understand why this is really allowed. As for officials making complaints against coaches, parents, and wrestlers. Those aren't complaints my friend, those are ejections, in other words that person did something flagrant to warrant being ejected, such as cursing, punching, bitting, and for coaches and parents, arguing a judgement call or saying something derogatory to the official such as "You suck."

Now IF the issue in your match was JUST a scoring error, as in the official awarded points but they were never recorded then you can go to the table and ask about them, if the official does not remember, the opposing coach does not speak up, then the issue must be dropped and the match must continue. So yes maybe he made a mistake, he's human, and sometimes its happens. However in the above situation just as much fault can be placed on the table worker for not recording it.

My point to you is, you probably aren't going to get very far trying to lodge complaints about officials, as I said before if the official really is that bad, chances are he's not going to find work very easily in most cases (although there are exceptions, which I won't get into)


William Nigel Isom
Officials Director (USAWKS)
KSHSAA #14274
USAWKS #577
Riley KS