BarrieToday welcomes letters to the editor at [email protected]. Please include your daytime phone number and address (for verification of authorship, not publication). The following letter is in response to a story titled 'Area football referees association looking for new officials' published on Jan. 23.
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The Georgian Bay Football Officials Association is looking for new members. I encourage anybody with an interest in the sport to consider refereeing. In fact, that thought extends to all sports.
After I finished my CA degree I worked my way through five years of university and law school. Besides accounting, I also refereed high school football, inter-faculty football at the University of Toronto and “worked the yardsticks” at university football games. That kept me in shape and earned a modest extra income.
It was only later in life that I realized the life experiences that refereeing provided. Let's look at them.
No football referee should start a game without thoroughly checking out the playing field. Before every game I would jog the entire perimeter of the field to check out the conditions. I found out where the sidelines were faint. I knew whether the goal lines and back line were clearly marked. I also found out where the wet spots were. That helped me throughout the game. In life you have to know the boundaries of any situation.
A referee must control the game at all times without appearing overly officious. You only learn that by refereeing a lot of games. You have to keep a sense of humour and smooth difficult times over.
You learn that you can only properly call an infraction if you see it from start to finish. If you didn't see the start don't call it. That can lead to a negative crowd reaction. Better to take the boos than to let down the players.
The best game I ever refereed involved only one penalty. I thoroughly enjoyed that game because referees are there to referee the game not call penalties.
During life one is continually making decisions. A major part of the decision-making process is knowing the facts. A referee soon learns the they have to “be in a position” to make the call. It doesn't matter how well you know the rule book if you aren't in a position to make the call.
Translate that into making decisions in life. You have to have all the facts and you have to follow a process. A referee does that all the time and without the luxury of much time to think. When they are personally unhappy with a call they made they learn to go over the thought-making process and realize what they left out.
Working with one or two other referees teaches you the importance of teamwork. You have to coordinate your efforts to take in the field of play.
My career as a referee was very satisfying. I was doing something outdoors, continuing a sport I enjoyed playing, getting paid and staying active. It was only later in life that I realized what other skills I had developed from refereeing.
Towards the end of my five-year career I was assigned to games between two private Catholic schools in Toronto, St. Michael's and De La Salle high schools. Since they were very hard fought it was a prestige assignment. I used to joke that I got the assignments because I was a Protestant. They knew I would be extra-neutral and if anything happened to me I wouldn't be missed.
I parlayed my career as a football referee into a job as the head referee of the Toronto Touch Football league. I refereed and assigned referees to all the games from August to November. That was really lucrative in terms of 1960s dollars. Five games a Saturday, starting from 9 a.m. in the morning meant $75. Mind you, when I got home I spent an hour in a hot tub with a rum and Coke and we didn't party too much that night.
I encourage everyone who has played or is interested in a sport to consider refereeing. Often games are played at night or on the weekend and can be fitted into a work schedule. As I have said the opportunities for life lessons are endless.
Doug Lewis
Orillia
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