I just went back through old posts to January, and found only two threads which had been closed..interesting that "Officials at State" was one of them. I guess censorship is alive and well.

Just a quick remark about this topic, and if you want to reply, I guess you had better do it quickly. I, like most people, saw some questionable judgement calls. And, like most of us, I can shake mistakes off pretty quickly, as refs are human.

However, in the case of one nameless (for the purposes of this post) individual, there is a huge disparity between mistakes, and intentional favoritism. I will be filing an official complaint in writing regarding this particular referee.

BulldogDad,

while I can't say that I saw anything major in terms of bad calls from referees this weekend, I do know that some mistake were made. But referees are only humans and the will make mistakes. If you want to file a complaint you are more than welcome too, but you should know that it will not do any good. At best case you might get an apolgy from him, worst case is it will go on def ears which is the more likely possibility.

If you want to open another Officials at State thread go-ahead I don't have a problem with it. Hopefully we could stay on the topic, the reason I closed that one was people were slamming each other and I had read enough. It is still on there you can read it if you want but it would be nice if we could voice opinions to better the sport instead of slamming each other.

Coach JT: The first part of my post was just being smart-alecky, please ignore my jibes. :rolleyes: The other thread was getting a bit personal.

Nigel: I am not going into detail on this site, as it is not the appropriate forum, but as I indicated in my original post, the incident in question was NOT an error in judgement. At least not the kind of judgement error we are used to discussing.

Lord knows you could put 100 coaches/referees around a mat, and you would get a split (somewhere between 99-1 and 50-50 ) opinion on a close call. Was it a takedown/reverse/etc? Depends on your frame of reference. No matter how bad the call, I can get over it if it was made from a position of neutrality.

I am talking about a referee (who we have a history with) letting the opposing coach call the match, slapping on unwarranted penalty points, and DQ'ing a kid for next-to-nothing.

And I anticipate very little coming of the complaint officially...didn't fall off the turnip truck yesterday. But I can guarantee that after following the offical process, that I will do EVERYTHING I can unofficially to assure that particular ref is not welcomed back at State.

See this is the problem, first a team gets themself into bad graces with a referee and then they continue to hold a grudge with him, then they are surprised when he retaliates back in a way that he feels warranted. There were only 3 or 4 referee's at State that I don't know that well and most of them were down working the little kids. As for the others they have officiated at the State tournament mutiple times. And the fact that they are there in the first place suggest that they must be doing something right. In any case rather than debate with you on weather or not he he was right, I would like you to email me and tell me the whole situtation becuase it interests me very much, im not in any position to vendicate your situation, but I would like to hear you.

No offense, Nigel, but I do not wish to discuss this incident with you; privately or otherwise.

If you need a reason, look at your last post. Or your last 50 posts.

I never mentioned bad graces, grudges, or retaliation. I said "history". By that I was indicating that the same individual had made some questionable calls in the past that seemed to be focused.

It is not our policy to EVER argue/cuss/fight with a referee. What possible good could come of it?

I have never done more than ask a referee to articulate their decision, and then we go back to wrestling.

Very well then, drop the issue because im probably the only one on the entire site that wants to hear you or cares about what happened. I just wanted to offer you an opportunity to say your piece. In any case you continue to do whatever you think is neccasary but know that your complaint probably won't go too far.

I have been around wrestling quite a number of years, and I have seen several referees who would make a call against a wrestler because they did not like the coach. It usually is the same ref making the calls against any wrestler from that coaches club. Don't get me wrong, most refeeres are good refs. I do not see it so much now compared to a few years back. Most generaly it was a ref that was from one club that was an average club and did not like the coach of a better club. Also there are refs that you better not even question a call they make, or you will be warned. I saw this happen at district tournament this year. The coach merely questioned the lack of a stalling call and was not being nasty or smart allecy and immediately the ref told the table workers that he was giving the coach a warning. Most refs are not like that, but some think they are perfect and should not be questioned. Enough said.

Frankster
I am going to defend the ref in that case, not seeing the match or anything, but you can not argue a judgement call and stalling is a judgement call last I knew.

I understand what you are saying, but there was no arguement, it was just a comment that was made and the ref seemed to take it personal. The coach did not call the ref over to ask him about the call, he just said calmly without any reference to a bad call or anything.

From my coaching experiance this is what I have to say to those who haven't ever coached and to those coaches who cause the problems mentioned above.

1. Don't call the referee over to discuss a judgement call.

2. Don't try to make yourself seem smarter or more knowledgeable about the rules than the ref even if you are.

3. Don't point out there own mistakes to them unless it resulted in the current score not being right.

4. As a general rule of thumb the only time you should call a ref over is if you want clarification about something he called.

Too many times i've seen a coach call the ref over and say "explain this too me" then he does and the coach starts arguing with him about it. Your not going to change a refs mind about just about anything. But hey don't take my advice and see how many times you win against the ref and see what happens to your wrestlers then next time that same ref does one of your matches.

Well, first of all, the ref was not called over to explain his call. The comment was just made with no offensiveness intended, but was apparently taken by a referee who thought he could not make a mistake. These referees get paid, and they should, but these wrestlers work very very hard and should deserve proper referees wether they get paid or not. And as for your last statement, sounds to me that you fall into the catagory that was mentioned earlier about taking a match out on a wrestler because you do not like the coach. And yes, you were not there, so maybe the coach was right and not the referee.

Ok some maybe the coach was right, it has happened hundreds if not thousands of times before but that does not change the fact that the official has the final say. If that means that a wrestler gets a state championship taken away then that is just part of the game. I don't like it and neither does anyone else but thats they way it is. It does no good to argue about it now just to validate your point. Most of the people in here will agree with you so what are you trying to prove?

I was not trying to prove anything, I was just stating an incident that happened with a referee at district. I know most of the referees, maybe not by name but by face, and many of them know me. I agree that most of them are good referees, but as in any officiating, whether it be wrestling, football, baseball or tidly winks, a referee should be able to accept some questioning, it goes along with the job. Many years back I refereed free style wrestling at many tournaments in Kansas and enjoyed it. I was a decent referee, but I also knew I made some mistakes, and I also respected a coaches questioning me about a call as long as it did not get carried away. That to me was part of being a referee. You are correct, we can talk about this until the cows come home and nothing will be settled, so on that I am ending my part of the conversation. See you next year, maybe. Thanks

I've thought about this thread for awhile and decided I would add my thoughts. We seem to have an official that doesn't appear to like us, our club, or my son. I don't know but I do know it puts a tremendous amount of stress on my son. To the point he is more worried about the official than who he has to wrestle. He has asked me to request a different official when he wrestles. I don't know if that is possible or even what I would say. I would like to talk to this individual about this but I've already been told by him he didn't have to explain himself to me. Typically if I question an official I really don't know or understand. Overall I think officials, coaches, participants and parents need more humility. What I see happen is humiliation from one or the other and then the feelings or emotions come into play and they should not.

Well Noblet,

I am under the impression that you really can't choose which ref you want for your match however I think that if you go up to the tournament director at any tournament throughout the year excluding qualifiers and national type tournament you could ask him to have a different ref during your match. Im not sure if it would be possible for him to be there every time your son wrestles and to make sure he is not ref'd by that particular one. But I think some accomidation could be in order. But hey that is something you would have to check on.