Wild Wild West

I had a great wrestling weekend. Friday was the Barrow County Championships. I started this tournament 5 years ago and haven't missed one yet. It was a close varsity dual with Winder pulling ahead with pins in the last two matches. Apalachee's middle school program carried the night which put the traveling trophy in the hands of the wildcats. Saturday I was scheduled to work a tournament at Oglethorpe, but it was canceled due to the second blizzard of the year. I decided to travel to the center of the wrestling universe, Collins Hill. It was the King of the Hill tournament and I was going for my first time. I found my friend Cheryl Flatt and asked if She needed any help. She knew I meant it and had me help sort through the first round bout sheets to help get the second day of the tournament rolling. There was plenty of solid wrestling, and many of these young men obviously wrestle behind the best in Georgia because they would make many Varsity squads. During the first round I went back up to the head table and asked if they needed any help, but Gretchen was a little greedy with her bout sheets, and made it clear that it was her job and would beat me down if I touched a completed bout sheet. I took the opportunity to say hello to some of the coaches and officials as well as some of the wrestlers. I found out that Alexander would be wrestling a dual with Collins Hill Varsity during the tournament. Suddenly Gretchen was not so apposed to me helping enter results. I took over for her while she watched the dual. I only missed a little of the dual while I entered results. There were some exciting matches even though the dual was one sided.
The finals of the King of the Hill had some quality matches, and I enjoyed watching a couple of the boys that I had watched grow up in the sport win there first King of the Hill Championship. One of them was an 8th grader.
Sunday was a new day. I had contacted my friend Ken Knight earlier in the week and offered my help with his beginner tournament at Oconee. It was quite an experience. The wrestlers were allowed to keep wrestling after they had lost if the match did not go three periods. In other words, if they got pinned in the first period, the period ended, and the second period would start with the loosing wrestler having choice. There were about 300 total matches on 6 surfaces. I called a little over 50 matches, and it was fun. I spent plenty of time helping the wrestlers and parents/coaches learn the rules. I had coaches all over the mats, and I was making them go to a corner to coach. Most of them had no problem with it. In the third period of one of the matches, a coach appeared on the center edge of the mat right at the circles edge. I motioned for him to go to the corner, and verbally said coach from the corner. He refused, so I stopped the match and waived him to the corner again. He waived for me to leave the building. I walked over and explained that there could only be two coaches per wrestler, and they had to be behind the tape line in the corner. He was just a little upset, and I think that it bothered him that I did not get upset. He said I think he is done and forfeited the match. I told the wrestler the match was over, and moved on. Latter when the same wrestler came up, the same coach was in his corner, the wrestler finished his match, and everything seemed to be fine. It was kind of crazy in there, a little like the Wild Wild West. I had a lot of fun at the tournament, and the wrestlers got plenty of mat time.

Keeping it neutral.

The problem with officiating your own wrestle-offs as a coach is parents complaints that you are being bias. It is even worse if your son is in one of the wrestle-offs. I had both of these problems when I coached, so I had no problem letting Eastsider know that I would be happy to come out and call his final wrestle-offs. The matches were hard fought and although some of them seemed close, most ended by fall. This was Eastsides final wrestle-off. The varsity squad is taking the weekend off, while the JV is competing at the King of the Hill Tournament. Loosing the wrestle-off meant you were going to The Hill. That takes a little of the edge off.
Calling Wrestle-offs is a unique opportunity to do a little extra communicating that you just can not do in a match. For example, I stopped the match due to stalling by the offensive wrestler in the first period of a match. He asked what he needed to do differently so I explained that he was riding legs preventing an escape or reversal, but he was not making any attempts to score. He understood and made an adjustment. He did not ask me in a rude, or disrespectful way, so I did not have a problem answering. In another wrestle-off the offensive wrestler ended up with a figure 4 around the body. When I stopped the match to call it illegal, I asked him if he knew what he had done, and he did. In a tournament I would have blown quickly past these situations unless questioned by the coach for an explanation. It is nice to be able to take a little extra time, and I think the wrestlers appreciate it also.

Doing the right thing.

I had a Varsity dual tonight. I arrived about an hour early, so the coaches agreed to start a half hour earlier than scheduled. It was a good match up, but the talent swing leaned a little hard towards one of the schools. In the predual conference I had with one of the teams they asked me to go over the offensive starting position, so we got on the mat and I reviewed all of the commands I would be giving. I told them exactly what I expected with every command, and we only had one caution the entire night. There were plenty of pins, and some forfeits so the dual went very quick. In the last match of the night, with the team score out of reach things went a little south. Here is the sequence.
The visiting wrestler approached the line, pointed to the celling and gave praise before he would shake hands. Officially I could have called stalling, but it was pretty quick.
While they were working from their feet, the visiting wrestler started talking smack. I know talking smack may be a slightly technical description for some of you, but I can not remember the exact words. It was something close to lets see what you got boy. Fortunately the home team wrestler did not react, he paused slightly and I blew the whistle to stop the action. I could have possibly considered this taunting and called it Flagrant misconduct and called the match. I could have considered it unsportsmanlike and given a match point to the home wrestler. To diffuse the situation I chose to tell the wrestler not to talk. I had already let his team know that they should not talk to me while they are wrestling, and I took the opportunity to let him know not to talk to his opponent.
After a hard scramble the home wrestler got the takedown. They were scrambling hard on the mat when the home wrestler lifted the visiting wrestler off the mat. I can not remember whether he had a claw, or a half in, but the home wrestler was trying to put the visiting wrestler from this lifted position straight to his back. The visiting wrestler would not give easily, and because of his effort the home wrestler ended up planting him on top of his head. I stopped the action, awarded the visiting wrestler 1 point for an illegal move, and started recovery time. I went to the head table while the coaches and a trainer checked out the visiting wrestler. He seemed to be hurt but not injured, so I thought that wrestling would more than likely continue. I had the table worker letting me know every 30 seconds so that I could inform the coaches. At about 45 seconds the visiting wrestler was up. they were rubbing his neck so I called the one minute. I asked the visiting coach if they were going to wrestle, and he said yes. I informed the table to cut recovery time and walked to the mat. The visiting wrestler still was not on the mat so I asked his coach again if he was going to wrestle. At this point I could have called stalling. The coach was telling the wrestler to have a seat, and the wrestler looked very mad. I asked the coach if he was defaulting the match, and he said yes. I awarded the match to the home wrestler on an injury default. The coach asked if his wrestler had to take part in the post match procedures, and I said since he injury defaulted he did not have to. I could have forced him to take part, or charged him with unsportsmanlike for not taking part.
I talked to the coach after the match, and explained what had happened, and why I asked the questions I did. He was not sure that I had called an illegal hold, or started recovery time. he was paying attention to his wrestler. He forfeited the match not because his wrestler was hurt, but because he was afraid that his wrestler might start fighting instead of wrestling.
Did I go by the book? No. Did I know what I was supposed to do according to the book? Yes. Did I do the right thing for the wrestlers involved? I think I did.
It was also Sr. night for the home school and they had some youth wrestlers that were going to wrestle some exhibitions after the ceremonies. I stayed to call the matches, and everybody cheered hard for the young wrestlers. The night could have ended on a serious sour note, but the bad parts of the night were totally forgotten.

50 yard dsh

Wow, that was the most matches I have called in that short amount of time.

For those of you that have seen my hand painted, two tone, Antique Gold, and Blue, pos, 1987 Dodge D150, you won't be surprised to know that it is the official Apalachee mat moving truck. Last night after Soccer conditioning(I am a girls soccer coach at Apalachee) I stayed after so that we could load a mat on my truck, and haul it up to the middle school for a tri meet.

I went up the hill to the Middle school after I was done for the day. As always it looked unorganized, and confusing, and yet by the 5:00pm start time it became a well oiled machine. At a little after 5 we started with a full set of matches between the two visiting schools. Most of the boys wrestled twice. Next came some quick matches between the Apalachee boys, and the Morgan boys, then a full dual between Apalachee and Social Circle. Again most of the boys wrestled twice. Next came Apalachee and Morgan. We did not quite finish before that 7:00 deadline. Thats right, I called over 50 matches in 2 hours.

Now the fun part. We loaded the mat back on my glorious truck and headed back down the hill. I got home before 8:00. That was a 50 yard dash.

One of my friends Tim Moore told me I called some quick pins. I told him I think you mean I call pins quick. The difference is I don't have a long drawn out whistle and some big theatrics when I call a pin. I have gotten a compliment on my style from the Apalachee 285, but I don't want people thinking I am calling quick pins. Tim told me that I needed to work on my style, I told him that my style was to get it right.

Life behind the desk.

State Duals is a great event. Since I have enjoyed the event so much over the years, I volunteered to help for the 2009 event. After the event I talked to the event director about using Trackwrestling to help promote the event. If you are not familiar with Trackwrestling just click on it, and it will take you to it's site. The people that can not come can view quickly updated information about the event. My vision was to put in information from bout sheets similar to an individual tournament. I got the idea from the schoolboy, cadet, and junior duals. They use this system, and I have enjoyed using it over the last few year. I tried to give a good explanation to Pete Fritts Sr.(Tournament director) about the site, but never felt I was doing it justice. Once I had Pete convinced it was his job to convince Gary Phillips at GHSA.
I did not think it was going to happen so I volunteered directly with Ron Domanico to help with weigh-ins. This was going to be a gratis service of doing weigh-ins, and helping make sure that the coaches had updated weigh-in sheets. After I let Ron know that I was going to help him out I contacted Pete to inform him of my plans. I brought up Trackwrestling again, and he told me that he had gotten it approved through GHSA time for me to plan some changes. Pete got me invited to the GHSA offices in Thomaston for the seed meeting, and I got permission from my administration for professional leave on Friday the 15th for the Duals. Then came the BLIZZARD.

The push back of qualifiers, meant I had to compress a weeks worth of work into 3 days. I started off by getting approval for another professional leave day for the seed meeting that got moved to Tuesday the 12th. I used the 12th to Seed the brackets as the meetings were held. It was fun to be there for the seed meeting, and I was able to pick up email addresses for the coaches that attended. After the meeting I stayed in the GHSA offices working on my email list. If I could get an email address for all 72 coaches in the tournament, I would be able to send them directions on how to enter there rosters. Entering a roster for one team is not a huge task, so I figured the coaches would be cooperative. I managed to get over half of the coaches to enter their roster online before the tournament. That means I had to enter the other half.
After a team weighed in, I would get there weigh-in sheet, and Alpha Master. For the coaches that entered their roster, I would verify it, and change weights as needed. That usually took me about 5 minutes per team. For the rosters that were not entered, I would have to enter every name and weight class. Some teams brought more than 30 kids. I entered, and verified wrestlers from 6:00pm till 12:00midnight on Thursday.
Friday morning came, and I was back at the coliseum at 7:00am. More weigh-ins, more entering, and verifying wrestlers. At the very end of the first round I got caught up (did not watch a match yet), and Robert Horton arrived to help. As a dual would end, the winning teams score keeper would take the book to the head table, it would be copied and given to the announcer, then I would either go get it, or Carson would bring it to me. As Robert and I pushed forward, I started getting texts from a few people including Cliff Fretwell. He was asking about the Internet connection, and whether or not he was going to set up a live feed for the finals. Just as Robert and I got caught up for the first time, Cliff texted me again asking where the updates were(joking) and I replied with a one word "current". I walked away from the table and watched some wrestling. The worst part of the task was over, and more people came to help. Chris Young was a big help, and he brought more help with him all the way from Bremen. Emily Spikes showed up representing the HILL. I meet Emily about 4 years ago at Duals, and she was a big help. The rest of the day had some great close duals, and we were all able to get a good look at them by sharing the workload. I got out of the coliseum about 12:30 with everything up to date.
Saturday morning I was back at the arena by about 6:30. Art was there seating up towels to mop mats. I had to manually shift some matches around within 4 of the brackets so I was double checking them. At 6:45 Art was a little anxious about his help that was supposed to be there, so I mopped a couple of mats before they arrived. Next thing I know the duals were up and running again. I had nothing to enter till the round was over, so I watched a lot of wrestling. Robert, Chris and Emily were all coming back to help, and Gwen and Danny Lutz were on the way to help as well. Danny does a ton of work with Trackwrestling for our Team Georgia group, but he had never done a dual so I got to show Gwen (she got there first) and she showed Danny. I am so impressed that I was able to teach Danny something about Trackwrestling:0
With all of this great help, I was able to watch a lot more wrestling.
The hardest part of our task was deciphering the score books. There are a number of different types of score books, and quite a few different ways to fill them out correctly. You have to have a good feel for wrestling to get all of the information you need from those books. Some teams used nick names for the wrestlers, and some had information on the wrong lines. Many had addition errors on them. With all of this decoding, and entering going on, it was easy to get it wrong. When we came up with a mistake we would continue going over the book till we got it to match, or found the mistake in the book. If that sounds terrible to you it probably would be. I like solving puzzles, so that part of it was fun for me. The conversations at our table were great and I could not ask for a more enjoyable group to work with.
Best note on a match from a score keeper. There was a takedown by a really good wrestler, 6 team points for that wrestler, and the letters MF by the other wrestler. We just were not sure what the MF stood for so I went to find the coach to ask him. He told me that the other wrestler had gotten hurt and forfeited the match. I went and verified with the score keeper and she told me that it meant Medical Forfeit(Should be Injury Default) . I told her and the coach that I thought she was saying that their wrestler had beaten the MF out of the other guy.

Not on my mat!

After viewing the Jefferson machine work their tournament last week, it was a pleasure to officiate a youth tournament this weekend. Our tables were run by High School girls who did an excellent job. I have to give a big shout out to the girls from mat number two. They kept my mat moving all day.
I had a wide variety of matches on the day. I had some kids wrestling their first time ever, all the way up to two wrestlers going head to head that could be top placers at National Tournaments. I had kids crying during their matches, and some even talking back to their coaches. I even had a father/coach/official telling his son to choose down only to watch him choose neutral (that one made me laugh).
As head official, I had some extra duties to help make sure the tournament ran smooth.
Even though there were no big problems on my mat, I had coaches and officials coming over to ask questions between matches. I even broke out my rule book once. I had the rule right, but I had to show it to someone in print just to verify it.
One of the other officials watched one of the last matches of the day on my mat. He said I was mean. He said that because I was calling stalling, and making the kids stay in the middle of the mat and wrestle. At this time of the season, I am not holding back on some calls that I might have let go, or been lenient on earlier in the season. It is getting closer and closer to state, and everyone needs to pick it up a notch. When I make a call, I don't always tell the wrestlers what it is, and I wait for the coaches to ask questions. When they ask I try to give an answer that they can understand, and everyone seemed to respond well to that.
The highlight of the day was a match between to of the best wrestlers in the gym. It was supposed to be on another mat, but I ended up with it. I remember these same two wrestling each other several times at a Parkview Tournament at least seven years ago. They were two tiny little guys out on the mat hitting real wrestling moves. Today they were two well muscled lightweights, soon to enter High School and it was a great battle. It was not the closest match of the day, but was still great to see, and I would like to see it latter in the year to see how both of these young men progress.
Number two highlight was seeing Jesse Miller there to help coach his little brothers. I reminded him of an old freestyle match that he broke a four time state champions nose with his butt, but that is another story.

Flagrant Misconduct.

I was at a Varsity quad tonight. I was not originally scheduled for the event, but there was a double booking, so I got to fill in. I am always a little edgy when we get close to state tournaments, and in case you did not know it, the area dual tournaments are this weekend. I knew that if a kid got ejected from this match that he would not be able to wrestle this weekend at the area qualifiers. It was an uncomfortable feeling, but I new if the situation came about, I would have to make the call. I made a strong case for good behavior in my prematch meetings with the teams. I pointed out that a Flagrant Misconduct call would not only get them kicked out of this competition, but also the next two. I explained that it would keep them from wrestling at Area Duals, and possibly a trip to the State Dual Tournament in Macon. I also went over some of the actions that would get them a Flagrant Misconduct call from me. No punching, kicking, knees, elbows, or biting.
Fortunately I did not get any Flagrant Misconduct calls. I did have two unsportsmanlike calls. One was for a forceful forearm to the back of the head from the offensive position, and the other was for a thrown headgear. I think there may have been a push off/shove at the end of one of the matches as well, but my view was blocked by the other wrestler.
Now the other strange part of the matches. One of the teams at the dual was the team I used to coach. I am two years removed from that team, and this is the first dual I have ever called with them. I also spend a lot of my spare time working with National Team development for Team Georgia, and GNWA, so to be honest, there is rarely a dual I call where I do not have some ties with some of the wrestlers. I do not have a problem separating myself from the wrestlers and calling a professional match, but it did feel a little like practice at times.
Trends I saw at these matches, and have seen from several teams include, lots of chokes, or near chokes, Plenty of neck whips(I have at least one every time I officiate), Illegal headlocks, and out of shape wrestlers. This is a rough time of year to be out of shape. A trip to state is at stake, or at least seeding criteria for Traditional Area Tournaments.
I am looking forward to seeing my friend Dennis Horne in the morning. I am really looking forward to his critique of my work. For anyone that knows Coach Horne, or has ever wrestled for him they already know what he is going to say. "YOU SUCK".