I’ve spent a huge amount of time writing posts where I am critical of the officiating “industry” and those we interact with, so none of that today.

I’m sick this Thanksgiving – so much so, I’ve already gotten a replacement for a basketball game I’m supposed to work tomorrow. I wasn’t feeling great on Tuesday, worse yesterday, and even worse today. I couldn’t imagine working today and didn’t want to cause a last minute sub situation tomorrow for the assigner and the crew I’m working with, etc.

Anyway, back to who I’m thankful for:

(1) My wife, Michele. I had already been officiating for 8+ years when I met her and she’s always said “You were doing this when I met you – who am I to tell you to stop?” And there were a lot of years where I went straight from football to basketball to baseball, seemingly without a stop.

I met Michele almost 27 years ago now and we’ve been married for all but 9.5 months of that time (yeah, we moved quickly). She’s always supported me. She still comes to a few games a year and was there for all of the big assignments and a lot of the little ones, too.

Before I leave for a game, she always says, “Have a good game. Don’t toss anyone.” For football, it’s “don’t toss too many flags.” It’s all in good fun, but I don’t feel right until I hear that on my way out.

(2) My daughter, Casey. She’ll be 18 in January and she’s going to college to play softball alongside her education. I will never pretend I was much of an athlete, although I found a way to stay close to athletics in my own way. Casey’s taught me patience and has shown me some real kindness and love in some pretty tough moments. One could argue we raised her right, but that takes credit away from her, which I would never want to do. She’s a great person cause….she’s a great person.

(3) My mother-in-law Sharon, who’s lived with us for just about 20 years now. I’m not sure I realized when I asked her to move in with us in 2002 that 20 years later we’d still have this 3 generation household, but no regrets on my part. Not only did she come in and help stabilize our household, she has been part of Casey’s life since her birth – Casey has never known a house where her grandma wasn’t a part of it or a part of helping to raise her. Hopefully that continues for a while.

(4) My ride-or-dies – my football crew – Jeremy, Tim S, Tim P, and Mark. When I got the phone call last year that we had been assigned a state championship game at Camp Randall, I was so happy, but mostly for them. So many great moments followed in the next 2+ weeks, from working our Level 3 game knowing we had “one more”, to ordering personalized gifts for each one of them to remember this by, to the game day experience starting with our crew breakfast to the time in the press box, to the game itself.

More importantly, these guys are my best friends here in Wisconsin. We all have our own families and lives, but I couldn’t imagine not having them in my life. I have done basketball with all of them (3 of them pretty regularly – Tim S, Jeremy, and I have done a state basketball tournament together).

People have asked me what makes a successful officiating crew. I like to think we’ve been somewhat successful and I like to think there are two factors — one is that we’ve made the choice to stay together for a very long time.

When I started a crew, I brought in a new person every year and we grew together. Jeremy joined in 2004 as a rookie, Tim S joined in 2006 as a rookie, Mark joined us early on (he wasn’t a rookie then), and Tim P is the most recent to join, in 2016, and by then he was an excellent and experienced official, who’s now also a white hat at the D3 college level. Others came and went, but for about 17 years now 4 of the 5 of us have been part of it and Tim P took us to another level.

The other thing that contributes to success is to try to hustle, work hard, communicate well, and not settle for being mediocre. We take weekly quizzes, watch as much film as we can, and we reflect on what we did well and where we can improve every week, every season.

Our climb to Camp Randall last year started with our first playoff game in 2007. We worked 1 playoff game for 6 straight years and have done two or more in the last 9 years we’ve worked. But we still have goals – we’ve never work an L4 game and we also want to get back to Camp Randall a second time (since the first time flew by so quickly). Most importantly we still want to improve week after week and challenge ourselves to get things right on the field.

(5) My longtime baseball people – my high school and college partner Rob, who is still the best ball/strike umpire I have ever worked with and who I got to share a field with for a high school state baseball tournament. I don’t see Rob as much as I used to, but when I do, it’s like I had just seen him yesterday. Jason Kelley is an amazing friend who has taken my place with Rob working HS baseball. Jason is a great husband and father and might be the best overall umpire I’ve worked with who still loves the game. I wish I did they way he does.

(6) Little League. I’ve had some great experiences as a Little League umpire, including 2 World Series tournaments (2011 – Bangor, ME and 2019 – Williamsport). The last 4 years as our district administrator. My future, again, as a Little League umpire, hoping to make more memories and provide a community-based program with some of my time and effort. Umpires I met through Little League who stay friends to this day — Matt, Dave, and many others, too many to count.

(My next blog will touch on Little League and some observation I saw recently in Referee magazine about Little League not paying game fees for their World Series umpires. Since I worked the Little League World Series (and none of those people have), I think I’m the perfect person to provide a rebuttal.)

(7) My 15 years at Metron, which went by way too quickly and were gone in the “blink of an eye.” If you have that kind of job that you loved and could’ve retired from, you know what I mean. Realistically, there were some lean years there and some doubt that we could’ve ever made it through the pandemic had we continued, but I had long-time work relationships with people I miss, even though we were scattered all over the US and UK. Andrew, Jan, Don, Charles, Dale, Jamie, as well as people like Gary, who moved on from Metron, but have stayed in touch.

(8) All my other friends and relationships I’ve made as an official and as an assigner. You know who you are – you are the ones I keep high on my texting list/chain. If you don’t know how important you are to me, you should. Many of you are people who would prefer not to be named, so I will just say thanks for your friendships.

I’ll be back over the weekend to complain as usual. Happy Thanksgiving!