Monday, December 04, 2006

USATF Officiating is Fun!

by Ann Gerhardt

Anyone interested in becoming a USATF certified official has a chance to learn how on January 13 at American River College or January 20 at UCDavis Hickey Gym.

Go to www.pausatf.org and click on Officials, then calendar, to get more details.

You DON”T HAVE TO KNOW ANYTHING about officiating. They teach you all that. All you need is a desire to give back to sport and some time to donate.

I’ve been an official for almost 10 years. It’s fun to get to know the area T&F coaches and officials, who are uniformly great people, if sometimes quirky. One can specialize in a particular event (mine are racewalk judging and horizontal jumps), or do some of all of them. The coaches always need officials for local track meets and show their appreciation, at least with a sandwich and chips for meet-day lunch.

Athletes need competent officials in order to keep competition fair and results accurate. It’s impressive to see the growth of athletes as they learn the respect for rules and discipline to follow them, as they mature from rather unruly high schoolers to collegiate stars. We contribute to that growth. We level the playing field so that it is fair for all. You, too, could be a part of it.

Rumors circulated in 2000 that many Chips were going to become certified so they could officiate at the Olympic Track and Field Trials. Most didn’t follow-through and missed a great experience. Actually, becoming certified in January 2000 didn’t qualify anyone to officiate the Trials by summer. It might have qualified someone to be a marshall or to escort athletes to the pee station.

But by 2004, after 4 years of officiating, I was asked to be part of the field event set-up group: You know, the ones who laid the (perfect) white-tape arcs for the hammer, discus, shot put and javelin. Pretty cool being on the field and getting to hang out in the official’s tent, watching competition on closed-circuit TV when it was too hot to sit on the complementary athletes bleachers.

No comments: