Back to the original topic...
After thinking about it for a couple of days, although our officiating pool is very shallow we still have some higher quality officials at every state tournament. The real culprits for these issues are the head or lead officials who think that we have to be FAIR when assigning matches. The lead official at 321A should have "handicapped" the front side matches (qtrs, semis, and finals) along with blood round and medal matches to put appropriate pairs on the matches. Why would you but the two aforementioned officials together and then follow it up with two of the best officials in the next match???? First off, we need to develop officials and you can do this by putting them on the OUTSIDE while a GOOD official is on the whistle. DO NOT confuse years of experience with ability to officiate. Generally speaking, if you have an official who never wrestled or lets even say never wrestled at state then you are not going to have a very good official (there will be exceptions but they will be rare.) If you wrestled in MS or JV that doesn't mean you understand the movement of a match... plain and simple. NOT EVERY OFFICIAL should workd a semi finals and finals match. THE BEST KIDS IN THE TOURNAMENT DESERVE THE BEST OFFICIALS IN THE TOURNAMENT!!!!! When a wrestler makes a mistake he goes to the backside or home. That should be the same thought process for officials. If we hold them accountable they will work harder. Earn your whistle for the finals, don't just hold your hand out and expect one.
Someone on here mentioned how hard it is to be an official. That is TOTAL BS!!! It is way more political than anything else. You take a test, go to three organized meetings and you are qualified, in KSHSAA's eyes, to be an official. I see Iowa officials working FLK matches from October to the April. Most of our guys are ghosts from March 1 to December 1. Again, we have exceptions. Officials should do it for these reasons in this order. 1. For the kids. 2. Because they love wrestling 3. Because they understand the importance of getting it RIGHT. 4. For compensation.
In closing...We need more former wrestlers to become officials!!!! We need to have outside officials to develop them for the future. We need to have lead officials who are NOT on the mat and who have half a brain about distributing the assignments and a set of balls to tell some of the officials "NO!! You are having a bad weekend, the kids deserve the best and you aren't there this weekend!"
