Austin Heywood
Staff Writer
Multiple factors contribute to the outcome of any sporting event. Size, talent and team chemistry are just a few. There is another factor most players don’t think about until something goes wrong during a game: officiating.
Refs are responsible for enforcing the rules, giving proper penalties when those rules are broken and keeping players under control. On every level from professional to intramural, refs have to deal with the attitudes of players who don’t agree with their calls.
One such disagreement, in nearby Taylorsville, recently made national news. During a recreational soccer game, a 17-year-old goalie punched a referee for giving him a yellow card. The ref was taken to a hospital where he slipped into a coma and died a week later. This tragedy calls into question the general attitude of athletes towards referees, including intramural referees here at the U.
“I think the intramural program is great,” said Caleb Redington, a senior in Parks, Recreation and Tourism. “For me, the ref situation is one of the worst things about it. I want someone over my game who has played the sport before and who isn’t just watching and getting paid.”
Redington has played several intramural sports and feels that inexperienced officials can cause problems for players.
“I would never attack a ref, but if the calls are bad it can escalate the tension between players to the point of a fight,” Redington said. “I would pay extra to hire more experienced refs.”
Despite concerns some intramural athletes have with the professionalism of student referees, Intramural Sports Coordinator Julian Gomez,says that officials are thoroughly groomed for the job.
“We haven’t had any major issues between student referees and players in the time that I have been here,” Gomez said. “All of our staff goes though a conflict resolution session as part of our main training. As a backup to the referees, every sport has a supervisor that would step in if an incident was imminent.”
All student refs must pass a two-week training that includes watching video, working on a court or field and officiating scrimmage games before the season. Some student refs have experience playing the sport and some do not. Even for those who have played competitively in the past, they quickly discover that being a player is much different than being a referee.
“Videos explaining where to stand and when to blow a whistle are great,” said former intramural referee Alex Nevarez. “But nothing compares to in-game experience. I explain to players before a game, we’re human. We make mistakes. We will do our best and if anyone feels we miss a call, they can let us know in a respectful way.”
Nevarez personally never came close to a physical altercation with a player, but getting yelled at was not uncommon.
“I had a player tell me I didn’t know anything about the game of basketball and I’d probably never even played,” Nevarez said. “On the next time-out, I threw the ball off the backboard and dunked it. He didn’t say anything after that.”
While there is sometimes discontent between players and referees in intramural sports at the U, there hasn’t been any violence in recent memory. Nevarez hopes that players and officials can empathize with one another to continue the non-violent trend.
“It’s a thankless job,” Nevarez said. “It’s a competition and someone has to lose … it’s easy to say, ‘The ref blew it.’ I hope that players can at least respect the fact that our job isn’t easy.”
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