SCARS AND STRIPES: Where officials, organizations fall short

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 15/07/2022 (1415 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Reid Kenyon left the referees’ room at Madison Square Garden, walked past Magic Johnson and out to the court for a greeting with Mike Krzyzewski he’ll never forget.

“Coach K’s like ‘Hey Reid, how are you? How was your flight in from Winnipeg?’” Kenyon recalled of the day he reffed Team USA prior to the London 2012 Olympic Games.

Kenyon was taken aback. While it’s obvious one of the greatest coaches in basketball history does his homework, he didn’t expect research-where-the-refs-are-from levels of preparation.

Kenyon had another interaction that stands out closer to home, with Kirby Schepp. The University of Manitoba Bisons men’s head coach mentioned before a game that his players already put thousands of hours in on the practice court, in the weight room and studying film.

“‘What training are you guys doing? Is this the first time you’ve come together on the floor?’” Kenyon recalled the coach asking. “He made a great point. I totally agree with what he’s saying. They put so much into it that we as referees, there’s no way we can match it but we need to prepare ourselves. It’s what the kids deserve. It’s what the game deserves.”

Kenyon, 50, would love to see his effort level be the standard officials pursue. He’s in the gym at 6 a.m. training to stay physically ready. He wants to look better than the 25-year-old university players he shares the court with, run better than them and never get accused of lacking in effort. He’s not alone.

• • •

While not every sport requires much training to officiate, fitness is as important as knowledge of the rules in others. Soccer is a prime example.

Provincial (Level 3) referee Sabrina Ferraz is one of many in Manitoba who works out specifically for the job and regularly watches clips to stay prepared for the unique situations she might face on the pitch.

Ferraz, 27, started at age 13 and called her first men’s match at 21. As a young, female ref at five-foot-four, she’s noticed players test her more than older, taller officials, especially the men she’s worked with.

Running into teams when she trains at the same pitch as them, however, goes a long way as they realize how much the good officials care.

“There’s a group of people that do this really challenging thing and have the same experiences as you, so you connect with those people,” Ferraz said. “I’ve always been a very ambitious person. In my other profession of teaching, there’s no such thing as a perfect lesson or perfect year so this idea of trying to get close to something that’s impossible, I like the challenge refereeing brings.”

• • •

This series has covered reasons why expressing frustration towards officials over calls hurts sports, but it’s certainly fair to hold them to a standard of effort and focus.

A lot of anger is a result of inexperienced officials going through necessary learning experiences and overworked veterans forced into too much action due to numbers, which are down across just about every sport.

Still, coaches and players have every right to be frustrated with officials who are unprepared for or disinterested in a game they pour their hearts into.

Kevin Newton is neither of those, but will be the first to admit he’s had teachable moments. The National (Level IV) volleyball referee from Glenboro knows how quickly a coach at any level can lose confidence in an officiating crew. He recalls a U Sports match when the Alberta Pandas came to town and while the teams started warmup, head coach Laurie Eisler questioned Newton on the net height.

“It’s embarrassing to me if a coach tells me it’s the wrong net height and they’re starting to play, even warm up, and they’re a number one team in the country,” Newton said. “She was not incorrect. I was doing other things but that’s still part of my job.”

Now it’s next to impossible to beat Newton to the gymnasium. He’ll be 75 minutes early for a match and have every detail possible sorted out before the teams walk in.

Conversely, a Manitoba Colleges Athletic Conference soccer match at Brandon University in 2021 started 15 minutes late because one of the referees driving in from Winnipeg slept in.

When teams practise almost every day and add hours in the training and film rooms, then suit up an hour early to get their bodies ready for a game they aren’t being paid for, they have every right to expect at least close to that from those who are.

Just as some say championships are won and lost in the off-season, most officials are destined to succeed or fail before they arrive at their game. Crazy moments and plays nearly impossible to call without instant replay come up, but it’s understandable when a decision ends up being wrong in those cases.

There’s no excuse, however, for an experienced official not to know the rules and understand how to explain decisions to players and coaches better than anyone else in the game. The onus is on the individuals to some degree, but the systems also need improvement.

• • •

Manitoba Soccer Association has put on weekend camps for select referees featuring top instructors from around the country. It has required officials to take monthly Laws of the Game quizzes some years. This season, it moved assigning youth games from districts to one central assignor with the intent of bringing younger officials onto crews for higher-level games.

The upgrading process features a valuable clinic with instruction and testing, followed by a handful of evaluations that even if failed offer fantastic feedback to improve for future games.

Manitoba Volleyball Officials Association, on the other hand, runs a clinic a couple of hours long for Level I officials, sends a partner out for the first few matches then leaves them mostly on their own to work low-level, relatively unimportant contests.

“You can’t be put into a situation where you don’t have a senior individual in the gym with you, there to support you, there to take the heat from some of those parents and help push them along so they know what they’re doing,” said former international basketball referee Rick DeGagne.

“We have to be there, we can’t send them off on their own, we have to be in the gym and it takes extra time, and that’s part of the problem.”

A “recertification” session with a rules test takes place each fall but doesn’t do much to improve anyone. The most recent one included a 15-minute discussion on what colour schemes are allowed for libero uniforms.

The upgrading process has flip-flopped from an acceptable one — pay a fee for a course, take an exam and pass about 10 evaluations — and one that borders on breaking labour laws. Some years, those upgrading are not paid for matches they’re being evaluated in. That includes multiple matches on the stand (R1), on the floor (R2), as line judges, scorekeepers and libero trackers. Referees would effectively forfeit more than $400 in match fees for benefits that are minimal until reaching national status — the fourth of five levels.

• • •

DeGagne is a massive proponent for mentorship at all levels of basketball refereeing.

He started officiating in Brandon in 1980 and worked the Olympic basketball tournament 20 years later. He still calls U Sports games today but is just as involved in developing the next generation. He observed as many AAAA provincial championship games as he could back in March, and selected the crews for the later rounds based on performance.

DeGagne is hopping on a plane this month to instruct a Canada West basketball officiating camp in Langley, B.C. It’s for current and aspiring U Sports officials to develop by learning from top referees in the classroom and on the court.

“We have classroom sessions, then for the most part, officials over the course of two-and-a-half days on a weekend might ref anywhere from four to eight games with evaluators who would be literally standing on the floor right beside you talking into your ear, pulling an official out in the middle of the game, putting another one in … giving immediate feedback and putting that person right back in to implement those ideas,” DeGagne said. “It’s immediate feedback in a competitive environment.”

He wants to see similar events in Manitoba.

• • •

Ultimately, there are coaches who have earned the respect of their sport and with that comes a longer leash to express frustrations with calls. Coaches at the university level sometimes have jobs and livelihoods on the line. While only officials with certain levels are allowed to work their games, those refs are understandably subject to a higher degree of scrutiny.

“Every decision we make affects the outcome on the scoreboard,” Kenyon said. “The way I toss the ball to start the game, if I toss it where the white team gets it instead of the black team because I have a sh..ty toss, then they get the first possession, they go down and get a three and they’ve created momentum, here we go.

“… When referees say ‘We didn’t affect the outcome,’ damn rights we did. Every single play we affected. When I don’t blow my whistle, I still made a decision not to blow my whistle. I’m making a decision.

“It’s really important referees understand that everything we do is going to affect the outcome and everything we do is creating a story on what our consistency looks like, so we got to stick to that.”

Too many people simply say “Don’t talk to the ref,” when it comes to a questionable call. Part 5 in Tuesday’s issue of The Brandon Sun looks at how officials in various team sports want those conversations to go and how they can benefit teams.

» tfriesen@brandonsun.com

» Twitter: @thomasmfriesen