William Nigel Isom
Officials Director
USA Wrestling has set forth a requirement that all officials working USA Wrestling sanctioned events must be members of USA wrestling. If all officials are not USA members, the tournament’s USA Wrestling sanction and liability coverage will be invalid.
There will be 2 options available.
Option 1
Register as a Volunteer Member on the www.usawmembership.com website. Complete the SafeSport certification course and have a current background check (when applicable). You can officiate at our events, but not receive any membership benefits from USA Wrestling, including any insurance protection. There isn't a charge for SafeSport certification or Volunteer membership. Background checks must be paid by the individual registering.
Option 2
Register as a Wrestling Leader on the www.usawmembership.com website. Complete the SafeSport certification and have a current background check (when applicable). The SafeSport certification is available at no cost. Background checks must be paid by the individual registering. You will receive all the USA Wrestling benefits, including insurance. The membership includes insurance that covers you during the USAW event and while you are traveling to and from the events. Go to USA Wrestling Insurance Info if you want to see the complete summary of coverages.
Exceptions
Wrestlers under the age of 19 and still enrolled in middle school or high school will be permitted to be used as officials at local tournaments when supervised by their school coach or a registered official.
Additional requirements
To be a USA Wrestling Kansas registered official, you must observe the following:
Throughout the year, several of our experienced officials host training clinics across the state. These opportunities are designed to support both new and returning officials in developing their skills and staying up to date on officiating best practices.
We encourage you to check periodically for updates on clinic schedules, as availability may vary by location and time of year.
With the launch of the new USA Wrestling Kansas website, registering with USAWKS is super easy!
If this is your first year registering on the USAWKS site follow these directions.
Step 1. Navigate to: https://www.usawks.com/register
Step 2. Select 'Official' from the Account Type dropdown.
Step 3. Fill out all of the fields. (Be sure to use the correct email you want because that will become your permanent login)
Step 4. Once you submit the registration you will receive a verification email. Click on the link in the email and this will verify your account. Once you are verified you can login at https://www.usakw.com/login
Step 5. You will end up in the My Account page, click on the Profile tab. From here you will have several other fields you need to fill out, like your address, phone number, and you will definitely need to enter your USAW ID (Every member of USA Wrestling has an ID number). Click on the Update button.
Step 6. Click on the Memberships tab, and click Get Memberships button. On the next screen click on the Registered Official Membership. Once you've done that and gotten your notification message you are now official registered with USAWKS for the current season.
Important Notes:
* The Registered Official membership will only become available for the upcoming season on September 1st of that year. This is the earliest date you can register for the next season. If you try to go to that screen before then and you already registered for this season it's going to tell you there are no memberships available.
* The system doesn't automatically track if you are compliant with the requirements of USA Wrestling National i.e having SafeSport and background check completed. Just completing your registration with USAWKS is just for our part. You will still need to complete all requirements for USA Wrestling, and KSHSAA (when applicable).
For officials who have already previously registered as an official in previous years, then the only thing you have to do in a given year is log back into this site, go to memberships and get your membership for the current season (On or after September 1st. Super easy, takes less than 2 minutes. Just make sure to keep your profile information up to date because that is what will appear in the Officials Directory and your public profile that can be seen).
As an official in pretty much every case you would be working as what is considered as 1099 contracted labor. Due to this, how much you make is COMPLETELY up to you. You can work as much or as little as you choose to in any given season.
There are officials who work 4,5,6, and sometimes even all 7 days during a week. But if you only want to work 1 tournament a week, or 1 a month, its your decision. As it pertains to USAWKS work, those events are almost exclusively on Saturdays and Sundays, occasionally a Friday is thrown in there. Once you make your way into middle school, high school, and even college, provided you are proficient, you should have no difficulty finding all the dates you want to work.
As far as compensation is concerned, for Folkstyle events, at a typical Saturday or Sunday USAWKS event, you can expect to be paid between $180 to $275 depending on tournament size, geographical location, and several other factors. If you are still in high school and choose not to get registered, a tournament may choose to use you as an official but you'll usually get paid less, which is why we always encourage even high schoolers to get fully registered with both USAWKS, USAW, and KSHSAA.
Once you are eligible to start working middle school and high school, you can expect to be paid between $200 to $300 for a tournament, $70 to $150 for a single dual, and then various levels of compensation in between for different type events.
RefRight Academy has an excellent article on all the equipment you will need to officiate. You can read all about it here.
You heard right!. USA Wrestling Kansas each year designates an amount of funds that is used to reimburse new officials. Here is what you need to know.
USA Wrestling will reimburse you up to $200 for registration fees and/or any uniform items that are required to officiate. This is subject to funds available and is first come, first serve, so once the funds have been depleted for the year that is the end of the program for that year.
To get your reimbursement we will need receipts of your registration fees and/or equipment purchases from any retailer. These can be digital receipts or if need be a camera phone photo taken of a receipt. You would need to email these to the Officials Director (Currently William Nigel Isom) with the subject "Official Gear/Fees Reimbursement Request" along with your mailing address. After that if everything checks out, your reimbursement will be mailed to you.
In general if you are looking to work USA Wrestling Kansas events the easiest way to find events to work is look at the Tournaments page on this website.
There you will find a list of all sanctioned events going on in any given weekend. The listing will have the contact info for the tournament. Either the person listed will be able to make a decision whether they would like to use you as an official or not, or they will give you the info for the person who is in charge of gathering officials for their event (usually the designated Head Official for their event).
Officials Director, William Isom, also have a video on this Officials Director YouTube Channel that goes over this in much more detail. You can view that video here.
For working the various District tournaments in the state, you would need to contact the District Head Official directly, and they are in charge of gathering officials for their event.
Selection for the State tournament is based on a number of different factors.
An easier way of putting this is: Work hard to improve your officiating, stay dedicated to what you are doing, demonstrate how good of a job you do as an official, and really work as many events as you can because the more often you are seen the greater the likelihood of others recommending you to work these events.
In addition there are a couple of other requirements to work postseason
