The football season for the Neosho Wildcats will kick off Friday in Bolivar.
One group of people who deserve our support and thanks are those who officiate sporting events. Few people in society endure more scrutiny and criticism than sports officials.
It seems that we are all experts in making the call, especially after watching slow motion replays from four different angles.
In college at the University of Arkansas, I took a sports officiating class. Our lab was to officiate intramural football and basketball games. On occasions, Coach Glen Rose would permit us to officiate Razorback practice sessions. My officiating elicited considerable criticism. Perhaps it was because — as I found later — I couldn’t see. I did, in fact, need glasses as my detractors had suggested.
Away from school, my first experience officiating was in summer camp at Fort Benning, Ga. I was assigned to call a basketball game between the University of Puerto Rico and Oklahoma A&M, now Oklahoma State. The Cowboys at A&M had several members of legendary Coach Henry Iba’s squad at summer camp. Iba’s teams had won back-to-back national championships in the mid-1940s. He later coached our nation’s Olympic team.
My performance was a disaster. The Puerto Ricans played the “no comprendo” (I don’t understand) act on me with great success. Whatever instructions I gave, they would do the opposite. Their sole purpose was to disrupt the game. I didn’t handle it well. Had I known then what I do now, I would have kicked a couple of Caribbean cut-ups out of the game and solved the problem.
They all understood English. There was such bedlam that A&M lost the game — not my finest hour as an official.
As a beginning teacher umpiring a baseball game at Southwest High School in Washburn, the seat of my trousers split. This called for decisive action. I tied a sweat shirt around my waist and the game went on.
Sitting on the bench in Cassville, sometimes I was pressed into service as an umpire for our baseball team. As an old catcher, I believed in a generous strike zone, and I called the game accordingly. My own teammates gave me the raspberries.
In Pea Ridge one night, I was called out of the stands to officiate a softball game. A foul ball hit me in the chest. There was a sudden smell, and in that instance, I realized that the ball had ignited a book of matches in my shirt pocket. That will get a body out of a shirt in a hurry. I still have a small scar as a reminder of that incident.
