Hello Everyone, I have not posted for almost 7 years now however been checking the forum all that time keeping up with some of the kids that it was my honor to coach.

This post has to be one of the best post I have seen. After I left for Iraq and came back my son got back into wrestling and I coached for a year for a team in Virginia. Here they wrestled in a league and used High School kids to officiate. These were Friday night matches and were mainly novice duals that they wrestled. If you attended a tournament the officials were still USA certified and also High School officials. When my son started wrestling High School I decided to start officiating myself. I was lucky enough to have some very professional individuals give me more and more aspects to my mechanics and position to be at on the mat to make better calls. I will be the first to tell you it has helped me to understand the sport more now.

Education, just like when your young wrestlers got started they had to learn, well so do the young refs. The goal when I was coaching was to produce young wrestlers to complete in the High School program, that is why high schools allow us to use there rooms, to help them and give them wrestler with knowledge so that they do not have to start at year 1 every year. The same can be said about young refs in the kids program, get them ready to officiate High School. Encourage the training of officials there, Kansas has some of the best officials I have seen and I hope to get a chance to work with them on day.

Just some of my thoughts, again great post Paratroop!

Ron Rhea
Former President
Wichita East Wrestling Club