Ref Experiences

Roughly eight hours straight through of reffing. Holy hell. 

There was, of course, a major snafu before the tournament even started involving the mats, but we improvised and it worked out fine.

First up was the little, little kids. They're more difficult to ref, but the upshot is that the parents and coaches aren't typically down your neck like they are for the older kids. The takedowns were just ridiculous to try to score. I had one kid in a bracket who was clearly a judo practitioner. He attempted the same throw on everyone he faced (gi and no gi) and then immediately moved to a scarfhold position where I guess he was trying to choke but never succeeded. He constantly walked his legs toward their head and the other kid would constantly walk his/her legs away in a stalemate. If you're Josh Barnett you can probably turn that into a choke. Not so much if you're an 8y/o kid. He did one of his throws on a girl that was a bit smaller than him and she hit the ground pretty hard. 

I called the arm-bars early for the little kids and not as early for the older kids. In some cases that was a good thing (the kid was able to escape) and in others it wasn't. No one seemed hurt, but I should have pulled the trigger on them earlier.

James came in to ref matches in gi and no gi (five total) on my mat that consisted of brown and black belts. I wanted no part of calling points for higher belts. In retrospect, I should have had the confidence to do it. The short breaks were nice though. 

One of my teammates had planned on competing in the brown belt division b/c there was no one in his weight class for purple and he was scheduled to test for brown later this month. James told us ahead of time that he was going to award him his brown at the tournament w/o having to test. I'm proud of Kelly for getting his brown, as it is well-deserved. I gave him a big hug before his match. 

The adults were easier to ref points-wise than the kids, but I also had coaches chirping loudly behind me. At one point I had a competitor in no gi that had competed on my mat in gi, and he made a snarky comment after finishing his match if I had given him his points that time. Yes homie, you got your points.

Overall, I know that I missed some calls. I felt like I did very good job of staying focused throughout, but in scrambles and transitions there were times when I would lose who was in guard. There were also a few flat-out misses. The subjective calls could have gone either way, but I might have missed badly on those. Those were near the end of the day and there's no question my concentration was waning.

I'm satisfied with how I did. No one was seriously hurt AFAIK, which is the most important metric IMO. I expected some unhappy coaches and parents, but it wasn't nearly as bad as I had anticipated. Rachael and Scott were working the table, which helped me immensely. Having people who know what's what makes a huuuuuuge difference, and I was able to confer with them several times about procedural things. I didn't quite feel like I was on so much of an island.