Young guns

I had a dual event today at Oconee. There were four mats, and four referees. The other three referees were young collage age guys. Stranger than that is the fact that I had coached two of them in freestyle, and had been a supporter of the other one all through High School. One of them officiated last year, and I had a lot of confidence in him. He overslept, and was late. I had not seen the other two officiate, but I was going to have to start in case we were going to have to cover for the other official. Fortunately he was less than 15 minutes late so it was not a huge issue.
I got the opportunity to watch all of them officiate some, and they were doing a fine job, in a highly confrontational atmosphere. As I watched the official on mat two, he walked over between matches to inform me that he had warned the coach in the far corner. The funny part is, as the dual was going on the same coach walked past me and said hey this official is doing a good job. I guess the coach had been testing his limits, and found them.
As head official i was called over to mat one by another coach. There was a question about a figure four on the head being a technical violation from neutral, and weather or not it should be a delayed call. I stated that a figure four on the head is a technical violation, but there would be a delay in order for the wrestler who's head was trapped to get the opportunity to score. The strange part is, the coach asking for the conference had the wrestler performing the figure four, so he could not score anyway. Latter on the same mat the coach had a problem with another call the official had made. I had seen the action in question, but was on the back side of what the referee saw. He called one point on a technical violation. It was a headlock situation without an arm. The wrestler with the head, had his hand clamped on his own thigh trapping the head. In the officials opinion it was an illegal head lock. I asked the official what he had seen, and he described it to me, and in his opinion it was illegal. I agreed with him, and reminded him of the proper signal for illegal holds since it was not a technical violation.
I called the final match. It was a big snoozer with a lot of low scoring matches. Many of the wrestlers were being overpowered from the top, but the top wrestlers were not able to turn the bottom wrestlers. There were several close matches that just did not have a lot of action. I had my share of stalling calls, technical violations for fleeing a hold, and technical violations for forcing a wrestler out of the wrestling area, but in the long run it was not a close team score.
I was the last match of the day, and my feet are sore. I am volunteering my time Sunday at Mountain view for a youth event. I am looking forward to the shift to youth and crazy enthusiastic youth parents.