If you are a wrestling official and you don’t enjoy being scrutinized, you are going to have a hard time doing your job in the future. In this age of the internet scrutiny will be brought on you like never before, and that is something that today’s officials will need to learn to deal with.
No official in any sport or at any level is perfect, but there are very good officials, average officials, and even some bad officials. The problem is that even the great officials miss calls; and at a tournament like the FHSAA finals, even great officials might miss several calls in the three day long event and after officiating dozens upon dozens of matches.
Judgment is a bitch of a thing, it involves what you believe to be the case; Control for example is a judgment call, and where one official may feel there is control, another might not be so quick to award points in the same situation. The important thing is that the official show consistency in the way he is willing to judge control, or lack there of.
There are times however that an official miss-applies a rule, and for that there is no excuse. It is the officials job to know the rules and apply them correctly, and I am less sympathetic to officials that miss-apply rules than I am to one who may have shown poor judgment because judgment implies and understanding, while rules imply overall knowledge.
There is a good selection of matches on Flowrestling that lend themselves to scrutiny of officials. Unlike other officials, I think this is a good thing, I think officials should see themselves on tape and be able to recognize their mistakes, why they may have erred, and how to avoid making that same mistake in the future. I believe it is a knife that cuts both ways; many times a coach will scream at an official and be upset with a call and video of the match may in fact vindicate the official. However, it can also serve to highlight that an official may have missed a call, and that is what we are here to talk about.
I am an official and I welcome the scrutiny, and if you are an official so should you. This forum is the perfect place for it so let’s talk about it.
So tells us about some of the calls that you may have seen at Lakeland that you thought “He really blew that call”, and also tell us about calls that you saw an official make that you thought to yourself, “What a great call” and lets discuss it.
The Ref
8 comments:
In the match between Hall and Villanueva I think the refeee missed a takedown in the second period when Hall threw Villanueva to his back and kept his feet in bounds, but for some reasons the official blew the whistle stopped the action and called out of bounds. I think it was a clear textbook takedown but the referee did not award it. He blew the call. You can see it clear as day on the flowrestling site. I think this is more poor judgment than misapplication of a rule, and I think if Hall's coach would have gone to the table and demand that the head official confer with the assistant that Hall would have received his takedown.
Maybe video could be used for training instead of for scrutiny?
The Chandler and Grueninger finals match. If I may say that was one of the worst reffed matches that day. That reff had obviously something against Chandler... why else would he call those ridicules stalling calls.
-Im4eversmart
Anonymous,
Whether they like it or not it video will be used to scrutinize official and their performance by the public at large as evidenced by this topic. You can't stop Youtube or for this matter Flowrestling.
Whether or not the video is used for training is up to the FHSAA, the officials, and their associations.
I think video for training is an excellent idea, however I have a feeling the more senior officials would be resistant to the idea. I hope I am wrong.
Anonymous,
I agree that chandler was penalized erroneously for stalling, but I don't believe it was personal, I think it was just a bad ref making bad calls. The guy probably never wrestled a day in his life. How you call someone for stalling who is riding perpendicular to his opponent in a cross body ride is beyond me. If that official made the same call in the Ohio or Penn state finals they would throw food at him and there would be someone waiting for him outside the arena.
I long wondered why so many poor officials work the States at Lakeland.It reaffirms my long held contention that the FHSAA is a corrupt good ole boy's club.
Dade County Officiating Best in State
Bopeet,
Put it this way, 3 of the top officials in Dade could not ref the state tournament, Dewberry (Son in tournament) Pardo (Coaching) Balmeceda (Coaching), that is why Dade only had one official.
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