When I first got out of college 20 years ago, I wanted to find ways to stay involved with wrestling.
\nI couldn\u2019t decide between officiating and coaching so I did the sensible thing \u2013 I did both. That lasted for two seasons when work and life made it clear that I had to give up one or the other.<\/p>\n
Coaching won for a number of reasons. I thought many times about getting back into officiating, especially after I stopped coaching in 2001, but I always found a reason to stay away for one more year.<\/p>\n
That all changed last fall. I took the officiating test and started working some local matches at the elementary and junior high levels.<\/p>\n
Now that the season has passed, a few things pop into my brain. First off, I want to apologize to all the referees who had to put up with me when I coached. OK, maybe not all of them, but now I see what it\u2019s like on the other side of the argument.<\/p>\n
I joked with a friend the other week, however, that my experience on both sides had one thing in common. I was always right, or at least I thought I was.<\/p>\n
All in all, I have to say that I had a good time officiating this season. When another friend saw me for the first time in my uniform at a recent all-star match, I had to laugh when she expressed shock and concern that I had that kind of power.<\/p>\n
I kind of like it, but not in an arrogant way. I have spent pretty much my entire life around the sport. Some of my earliest memories are from my oldest brother \u2013 he was in college before I hit kindergarten \u2013 practicing moves he learned while wrestling at school on me.<\/p>\n
Experiences like that put me on the path to competition. That led me to coaching. All along, I soaked up everything I could so that many, many things about wrestling come to me almost as second nature. That helped me settle in pretty well when I first put the whistle around my neck late last year.<\/p>\n
I worried that first night if I would all of a sudden find myself frozen, searching for even the simplest of calls. The opposite happened. I felt right at home, even if I still don\u2019t feel 100 percent comfortable in my referee\u2019s uniform.<\/p>\n
Sure, I had the moments that all officials have. I was told I didn\u2019t know anything about the sport. I was blamed for the future failure of a tournament because of a call I made. I even had a little kid throw his ankle band at me.<\/p>\n
In the end, I just laughed all of it off. I knew in every case that I had done the best I could to make the right call. I stayed clam and focused and kept everything in the right perspective.<\/p>\n
Plus, I was doing something I loved. I just hope that some of the kids wrestling end up feeling the same way when they get to old to compete.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
When I first got out of college 20 years ago, I wanted to find ways to stay involved with wrestling. I couldn\u2019t decide between officiating and coaching so I did the sensible thing \u2013 I did both. That lasted for…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,13,99],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-900","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-columns","category-sports","category-wrestling","wpcat-3-id","wpcat-13-id","wpcat-99-id"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/regularguycolumn.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/900","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/regularguycolumn.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/regularguycolumn.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/regularguycolumn.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/regularguycolumn.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=900"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/regularguycolumn.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/900\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":901,"href":"https:\/\/regularguycolumn.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/900\/revisions\/901"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/regularguycolumn.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=900"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/regularguycolumn.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=900"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/regularguycolumn.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=900"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}