I just got home a bit ago and ate some dinner after reffing all day at the Everett Girl's tournament. Not sure what "SnoCo politics" are, as I am not in a leadership position with them, and that is by my design and they have accepted that. I have been in a leadership position in every group I was ever involved with, until I hit the age 50 mark, and started to say thanks but no thanks when asked to up my involvement. I am just a foot soldier in the SCWOA but I just see a group of guys doing the best they can. There are rules on advancement that apply to everyone. When I joined the SCWOA I had already done every level of USAW wrestling, including reffing numerous National Finals matches in Fargo. Nonetheless, I was new to the SCWOA and started at the bottom doing weigh-ins and reffing JV. I would get this shocked look from coaches when I should up as the JV ref for a dual cause so many of them knew me from the USAW freestyle circuit. They would say "what are you doing here" instead of me showing up as the varsity ref. I told them there are time and evaluation rules ALL NEW members have to go through. I was sitting in a WSCA board meeting on summer next to a well known coach that was bringing his team up to wrestle Lake Stevens the next winter and asked my if I would be reffing it. I said no, I was still a JV ref, so they would be sending a #1 for a big dual like that. He said "damn, I was hoping to get you because I know you wouldn't homer us!" He was just joking around but that was funny to hear. As I put in my time, and moved up the ladder, I ended up reffing lots of the Lake Steven's high profile duals with teams like Roseberg, Tahoma, Graham-Kaposin, South Kitsap, etc. It all just takes time to get to that point.

The bottom line is it takes time to move up in any organization, and patience eventually gets it's reward. I joined late in the game to just help in the SCWOA after my son had finished his wrestling career. It took me about 8 years of moving up the ladder before I did my first Mat Classic. All these things take time to get there so I can only assume that the gentleman talking about politics had some type of problem with the current advancement rules or just had a personal conflict with a board-member or two. That is not uncommon in any group that I have seen over the years.

I don't know who this poster is but if he would like to talk with me about it his concerns, he can email me his phone # at info@washingtonwrestlingreport.net and I would be happy to talk with him about it. We have some good young officials coming up but we just need a lot more. Every association is short of official's, including Bob Turner's PNW association. We had 4 or 5 of our officials at their Edmonds tournament because they could not fill all the slots. Even adding our group to the mix, we didn't have as many refs as we should have. We even had at least one Skagit ref.

I don't run into issues with "politics" because I just don't care about that, and therefore it doesn't affect me. I am only officiating for the benefit of the kids and if I don't get a certain assignment it is no big deal. I have no ego involved with this and just know that without officials, they can't have tournaments, and that would be a shame. Again, I encourage any former wrestlers or parents that want to help kids, and give back to wrestling, to seek out you local official's association, contact them and get trained. We welcome all that are willing and able to help and learn.