Lakota West Offseason Duals

I had the pleasure of officiating and off season dual wrestling tournament at Lakota West a couple of Saturdays ago.

We worked our tails off. We had 6 officials on six mats with no break and 8 rounds of hardcore Varsity type matches. There were several state placers and champs in the house. This made for some stellar match-ups.

I ended up officiating the match for first place between Fairfield and Harrison. It was a pretty long day for all of us and all of the officials hadn't officiated for over a month. However, I don't think we acquired to much rust and for the most part it was a smooth day.

The tournament director had me get the officials for this event, so I was able to get some fresh guys and let some of rookies from our association get some Varsity experience. One of them had the most intense dual of the day between Mason and Fairfield.
The second to last match was the 215 weight class that went into overtime. The Mason wrestler had 30 seconds to get up and there were some tough scrambles that put the young official in unique situations. He had both benches going crazy but he stayed strong on his calls and looked poised out there. The Fairfield wrestler ended up riding his opponent out and then his teammate pinned in the following match at 275 lbs. This gave Fairfield the victory and eventually they won the whole tournament.
I had the chance to observe overtime of the 215 match and after the official walked off the mat, I looked him in the face and said, "You said you wanted eventually do the big matches, that's a good start. You still want too?" We shared a laugh. We actually grew up together in high school. Back then we were friends one day and ready to do battle the next. We laugh about those days now. Glad to help him anyway that I can in the officiating process as well as any other official, fan or wrestler for that matter.

Since then I've only officiated Flag football. For now I'm not scheduled to officiate wrestling again until late May.

But I still keep up with the sport and like to stay in tune with new rule changes or anything else that may be going on.