A little off topic but!!!! Everyone makes mistakes,everyone! No matter how experienced you are or how much you know the rules mistakes are made, its just a fact of life for a referee. I officiated several years ago for about 3 or 4 years it is a hard thankless job that is exactly why i stopped doing it. I have coached high school, college, and kids club for the last 18 years. The one thing I don't understand about ref's and remember I know how tough their job is, is that when they do make mistakes instead of talking about it with the coach who asks them, the referees immediately gets a defensive posture and doesn't want to listen to what you have to say. It happens all the time and I guarantee, that they know they made the mistake and don't want to admit it. Referees have a very tough job everyone understands that, but before every tournament during the coaches meetings the head ref asks all the coaches to be respectful and handle things the right way. I think the ref's should start doing the same. It is within the coaches right to raise his hand and approach the table to get clarification and to express his opinion and understanding. Alot of times when i see coaches do this the ref immediately gets an attitude and doesn't want to listen. Coaches should always respect the referee's for what they do and for their knowledge but the coaches should get the same thing in return from the referee. Just my 2 cents.
From my personal experience, and based upon my observations, its a two way street. Inexperienced coaches and inexperienced officials have a hard time communicating. Hard headed coaches and hard headed officials butt heads. Mature, confident officials and mature, confident coaches can usually talk things over and get things resolved. Kids wrestling has its own set of issues and also has a lot of young officials and coaches who aren't mature (they are young).
At the HS level, in eastern KS, we have a pretty stable group of mature (older)officials and I see more guys reversing calls, explaining themselves, and apologizing to coaches when the call/match gets messed up.
That said, it is sometimes very hard to put on a happy face and not have an attitude when you hear a coach hollering about some "rule" that isn't a rule and then you see him walking to the table to tell you what the rule is, when you already know that he doesn't know the rule but you have to go to the table nonetheless. And you know that when you give him the "coaches misconduct" warning its not going to make things better. True story....after a table conference I told a coach I was warning him for "coaches misconduct" and he launched into an argument that he had been respectful, had not raised his voice, and why would I consider what he said misconduct?....seriously.
