low-single-05

Officiating for 3-5 feet away? Outside of the occasional locking hands, finger grab, and obviously pinning situations there is no reason for an official to be anywhere close to the competitors. If you want to see excellent examples of officiating please find the time to tune into the BIG 10 Network when the are covering wrestling. Notice the lack of an official in the picture until there is a top and bottom situation. Admittadely, officiating a sport as dynamic as ours is very difficult. I would argue that having significant wrestling experience is imperative in order to anticipate positions and directions of movement as well as likely scenarios for rules infractions. In addition they have long days and are on their feet and bellies for most of those days. What they do is important to our sport because without them we wouldn't be wrestling at all. 1) There are without question bad wrestling officials 2) We should never assume that bad officials intend to impact matches 3) Rescheduling the state tournament for 2 weekdays may have an impact on officiating 4) Following is a link to the BTN wrestling schedule so that thegreatgatsby can see good officiating http://btn.com/2014/11/24/btn-announces-2014-15-wrestling-coverage/

Moving the tournament is the right decision. No weather conditions will keep kids from competing and the state tournament should take precedent over any school or extracurricular activity. I would expect all legitimate contenders for a place on the stand to be there. That being said, I will be very interested to see who is officiating on a Tuesday and Wednesday in March. I don't think anyone would disagree that for every great official we have there are at least 3 poor if not absolutely terrible officials. I hope it doesn't happen but I'll bet that there are a few blown calls that decide important matches. Officials are human too and on occasion the moment can be too much to handle.