Clearing Hurdles

The 100-meter hurdle race is set up with 13 meters from starting line to first hurdle; each hurdle is set at a distance of 8.5 meters apart for a total of 10 hurdles. The home stretch from the last hurdle to the finish line is 10.5 meters long.

Steve Baron, Referee Big 12, shared with our crew that the football season is like a 100-meter hurdle race, and each week of the season is another hurdle. Officials/crews come out of the blocks and gain speed in the first third of the race or season. We establish a rhythm and hit our stride in the middle third and push hard to finish strong in the final third. In any race, the start is important. But, just as critical is how we handle each hurdle. For officials, our hurdles are a game, a call, our health, or any situation that could harm us from clearing the hurdle and heading to the next one. Most weeks, we clear these hurdles with no issues. But, when we stumble or even fall over a hurdle or two, do we keep moving or just give up?

At this point in the season, we are transitioning to the last third of our 100-meter race. So far, we have cleared several hurdles and are now heading to the last hurdles and the home stretch. This is the time to push hard, to lean in, and to finish strong! We can’t lose focus on the hurdles ahead, being careful to take one hurdle at a time and bringing all our momentum and all that we've learned from the previous weeks and applying it to our next assignment. Worry about next week, next week; the focus is this week’s game, or the imminent hurdle, right in front of us.

With your help I can advance against a troop, with my God I can scale a wall.  (Psalm 18:29)

 

In this verse, the psalmist recognizes that when facing “hurdles,” we need help. The key word in this verse is ‘my’ – it’s with my God. Our personal relationship with our Heavenly Father through Jesus helps to lead and guide our thoughts and decisions.  Extend this concept to our officiating crews.  We can clear hurdles and scale walls with “my crew.”  When crews lean on each other, they gain greater strength together as opposed to just relying on each one’s individual abilities.

“When you are prepared for the threats, challenges, obstacles, you become better equipped to handle the hurdles.”
― Carlos Wallace

Let’s clear our hurdles better than these athletes:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sXPBRw53CA8

Let’s be smooth like the winner of this race:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DeKjh9wUzwY

 

Calming Insults

Why do coaches, commentators, and fans spew insults at officials?  For coaches, maybe it’s a way of making them feel better about a situation or even to get an official to do or act in a way that favors their team.  For commentators, it attracts attention to their broadcast and social media which increases ratings.  For fans, well, they are just fanatics and obviously biased to their team!

The Bible’s Old and New Testaments provides direction on how to handle those who discredit or defame you.  Let’s look at some of the verses that speak to how to handle insults:

Psalm 37: 11: The meek will inherit the land.

Proverbs 12:16:  Fools show their annoyance at once, but the prudent overlook an insult.

Matthew 5:5:  Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.

Matthew 5:39:  But I tell you, do not resist an evil person. If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also.

These verses instruct us on how to handle insults:

Be meek:  be humble, patient, and quiet in nature, especially when provoked by others

Be forgiving: don’t seek revenge or return evil for evil

Be prudent: make wise and sensible decisions

In addition to insults, officiating can also be full of irritations, such as travel issues, players not being properly equipped or dressed, coaches complaining or whining about fouls, fans shouting their displeasure, and even fellow crewmates and officials not being prepared or focused.  If we are foolish, we will respond to these irritations immediately and with regret.  But if we are meek, forgiving, and prudent in our response, the bothersome situations will be better handled leading to a peaceful outcome.

When I look back on my knee-jerk reactions now, I realize I should have just taken a breath.  Fred Durst

Start Again and Again and Again

Life is filled with series of breakthroughs –a sudden or important development or an instance of achieving success.  As officials, our breakthroughs come in the form of getting our first start at the college level, being assigned a certain game or post-season assignment, and or moving up to the next level we are seeking.  But when considering the games we officiate weekly, each play should be viewed as a breakthrough—a process of successfully finishing the play and being ready to start the next one.

What is the result of our breakthroughs in officiating? —wisdom, knowledge, and perspective.  Simply put---we learn.  Sometimes the lessons learned are easy and other times they are hard.  If not careful, we can allow the hard lessons to become obstacles. Examples include incorrect calls, wrong mechanics, and poor communication.  So how do we overcome these obstacles?  Start again! But realize that we can also allow success to become an obstacle that needs a breakthrough.  Obstacles from success include complacency, pride, over-confidence, etc.  How do we move on from success? Start again!

The reality is obstacles do not go away.  We never enter the land of “no obstacles.”  So, keeping ourselves moving forward –starting again – each play, each game is critical to our breakthroughs. 

Exodus 14: 15  And the Lord said to Moses, “Why do you cry to Me? Tell the children of Israel to go forward.

The Lord led Moses and the Israelites out of their desperate situation in Egypt. During their escape, they were at the Red Sea and had the enemy coming straight for them.  What was the obstacle they saw in their way?  The wideness and deepness of the Red Sea.  Moses prayed to God who answered, “move forward”.  How did they move forward?  Moses obeyed God by putting his staff in the Red Sea resulting in God parting the water, allowing Moses and the Israelites to cross the sea and enter the land God promised, all while the enemy was swallowed by the sea.

What is often seen as an obstacle in our way is actually our breakthrough.  We must keep moving-starting again, and again, and again.

March on. Do not tarry. To go forward is to move toward perfection. March on, and fear not the thorns, or the sharp stones on life's path.   Kahlil Gibran

Steady & Ready

When the crowd is booing, coaches are yelling, and players are complaining, how do we officials respond?  Sometimes, coaches try to intimidate, rattle, and pressure us into making decisions before we are ready in hopes we will think and act for their benefit instead of in the best interest of all parties involved.

So as officials responsible for administrating the game, how do we best handle the challenging situations of stress and surprises? In high pressure situations, we officials need to exhibit two key attributes to smoothly transition through the situations—grace and poise resulting in calm, steady nerves.

Grace and poise are defined as follows:

Grace:  disposition to or an act or instance of kindness and courtesy

Poise: a stable balanced state; gracious tact in coping or handling

When we are able to calm our nerves in stressful situations, we exhibit an attitude of kindness while being level-headed in our decision making and communication. This is a win for all parties involved on the field!

Proverbs 19:11 ESV

Good sense makes one slow to anger, and it is his glory to overlook an offense.

Solomon, the author of Proverbs and noted in Bible as the wisest king, provides the framework to show discretion—the ability to know the right action for any occasion—having good sense and slow to anger. In a state of calm nerves, we exhibit grace and poise which increases our discretion and reaction.  In situations where we throw our flag, the Referee announces the foul, the crowd starts booing, and coaches start questioning the call from the sideline, our grace and our poise allows us to have a better mindset to address the coach and build rapport and respect while moving onto the next play.

You can’t always control what goes on outside. But you can always control what goes on inside.” – Wayne Dyer

Always Our Best

We have all heard the adage, “Do your job and do it well.” In life, you can count on having to do things that you would rather not do; but in becoming your best self, you should strive to do ALL things with excellence.  In officiating, we have unwanted responsibilities that still must be done with excellence--cleaning locker room after a long game, still studying rules halfway through the season, taking quizzes upon quizzes to test our knowledge, cleaning shoes to rid of turf stains, etc. Keeping the attitude of “everything matters” keeps us striving to be the best.  Even if we have achieved a certain level of success in our profession, we must keep taking pride in all that we do and keep pushing ourselves to do even better.

When we live as if everything matters, we take personal responsibility for all we do.  But we should also push others to reach their greatest potential too. However, this is a big commitment!  So, what is one important trait it takes to meet this challenge?  Being unselfish.  A person not centered on just self takes pride in all things, never thinking anything is beneath him or her.  Being unselfish takes all the credit away from yourself and how much you get noticed, meaning you may not get the credit for a smooth-running clock or incorrect calls waived off. Sometimes, another person may even get the credit for your well-done job. But still, our responsibility is to continue to do our best understanding that “just doing our job” is not excellent enough.

Proverbs 13:4
The soul of the sluggard craves and gets nothing, while the soul of the diligent is richly supplied.

If we approach all situations, projects, and tasks attempting to be our best and performing with excellence, we can be confident in our body of work.  There may be setbacks, our weaknesses may be exposed, and others may even get credit for our successes, but it should never be because of the lack of “doing our job and doing it well.”

Wherever we are, whatever we’re doing and wherever we are going, do it well!

Seeing for Real

Do we make better decisions when we base them on objective thoughts or when we base them on our perceptions?  Before answering, let us look at what objective and perceptive decisions include:

Objective

·         Not influenced by personal feelings or opinions in considering fact

·         Seeing events clear of distractions, exaggerations, and misperceptions

·         Taking “me” out of the equation

Perceptive

·         Characterized by sympathetic understanding or insight

·         Adding information to the event that is not needed

·         Applies judgments or opinions

When we observe a situation objectively, we see facts. When we add perception to a situation, we bring other issues into account.  How often do we see what we think instead of what is actual?  The key to remaining objective is to handle our emotions.  When we let our feelings get in the way, our perceptions give us information that is not needed or not necessarily true.  Processing situations this way in real-life situations and even in football often dictates the way we respond. For example, a deer observes bright lights and senses danger.  Whether by instinct or by perception, the deer runs in fear and darts right in front of an oncoming car.  Perception can lead us into a path we do not want to go.  If the deer would think objectively, it would run away from the source of the bright lights instead of into the path of them.

Titus 2:7-8:  Show yourself in all respects to be a model of good works, and in your teaching show integrity, dignity and sound speech that cannot be condemned, so that an opponent may be put to shame, having nothing evil to say about us.

In these verses, Paul instructs Titus (and us) to be above reproach in how we act and speak. A key factor of being the “model” Paul refers to is being factual and not negatively influenced in our thoughts and actions.  Thinking objectively takes “me” out of the equation and keeps my opinions and feelings out of the equation.  When we handle difficult situations in an objective manner with our spouse, family, friends, co-workers, crewmates, coaches, and players, they will feel safe around us and therefore learn to trust our words and our actions.  And in the end, “nothing evil can be said about us.”

The perceiving eye is weak, the objective eye is strong. (Miyamoto Musashi)

Credit: “The Obstacle is the Way” by Ryan Holiday

Unexpected Preparation

 “What’s the worst that can happen?”  As a crew, when we practice potential difficult or bad situations ahead of time (hindsight in advance), we are much more prepared when something difficult actually happens.  By practicing and thinking of the bad and then possible solutions, we can actually be better prepared and more optimistic.

In the medical field, the term postmortem is used to examine a dead body to determine the cause of death—especially when the death is unexpected.  The goal is to learn and improve for when a similar situation occurs in the future.  In our officiating world, this process is referred to as post-game review and grading.

Examining premortem means we look at what could or will go wrong before an activity/project/game starts. If something goes unexpected, what is our plan, how do we handle, what are the options? We should practice hindsight in advance.

In a world often focused on the negative, many will question why to focus on potentially bad situations. But, preparing for disruption can be a positive.  Would we rather have a pleasant or unpleasant surprise? When examining premortem, ask “what if, then” questions:

What if………Then, I will….

What if………Instead, I’ll just…..

What if………No problem, we can always….

As a crew of officials, we should strive to create a positive and up-lifting environment because negativity can lead to friction.  We do not want to be pessimistic, but we do want to be prepared for adversity.  The key is to anticipate and prepare.  We examine what, when, and how a situation could happen and our potential responses to it.  Anticipation creates a range of potential outcomes to minimize surprise.

Proverbs 24:27
Prepare your work outside; get everything ready for yourself in the field, and after that build your house.

In this verse, Solomon explains that before we build our house, we prepare and then we go to work.  Preparation and getting ready as officials include examining those things that could go wrong and are difficult to handle.  However, it does not end there.  Take the next step to determine our plan to handle and our options to respond.

Prepare for disruption by working disruption into our plans.

 Credit:  “The Obstacle is the Way” by Ryan Holiday

Control Yourself

In the book “The Obstacle Is the Way,” author Ryan Holiday explains when the first astronauts were trained to enter into space, one skill was emphasized more than any other—to not panic…to control emotions.

Scared, nervous, agitated, panicked, afraid, overreacting—all words that describe when we are not in control of our emotions.  When we panic, we often stray away from our plans, we ignore policies, procedures, and rules.  Then, what happens...MISTAKES.  Our thinking becomes cloudy, and we do not react how we would like or want to.  So, how do we control emotions?

In officiating and as with many aspects of our lives, we plan to the smallest detail.  However, even in our best preparation, something (maybe many things) will happen that does NOT go according to plan—ball boys do not listen and perform as they should, coaches complain about leaving the field in the wrong order, weather causes a delay, clock operators don’t show up on time, etc.  Even if we have the best plans, we have to be prepared to adjust.

How did NASA prepare astronauts to stay calm?  Panic was “trained out” of them.  NASA re-created the launch day as it should go.  The astronauts would go thru these mock launch days over-and-over again with no mistakes.  But, then, NASA introduced various problems to train the panic out the astronauts and to help remove uncertainty.

Much should be the same for officials.  The more we can prepare and train by learning from our mistakes and the mistakes of others --grader evaluations, rules study, video review, pregame crew meetings, and watching other officials-- the more we can remove uncertainty and panic--or, at least, stay calm when it happens. 

Ecclesiastes 10:4:  If the anger of the ruler rises against you, do not leave your place, for calmness will lay great offenses to rest.

In the face of obstacles, the writer of Ecclesiastes challenges us to stand firm, stay calm, and put to rest the obstacle we are facing.  Fight the urge to panic and focus on what we can change with the task we are facing.  Obstacles make us emotional.  So, the key to overcoming obstacles is to keep emotions in-check—staying steady no matter the situation.

Focus energy on solving problems, defeat emotions with logic—reasoning.

                                                                             Credit:  “The Obstacle Is the Way”, Ryan Holiday

What Do You Do?

 

Over the last couple of football seasons, as our officiating crew left the locker room to go out onto the field for the opening kick-off, one of our crew members would yell out “Do What We Do!”  It’s a jokingly rally cry similar to ones other ball teams use as they head out onto the field.  This expression has often left me contemplating “what do we do as officials?”

Let us break-down officiating into 3 areas of “what we do”:

1)    Prepare

2)    Perform

3)    Evaluate

Prepare: Our preparation includes being physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually ready. Preparation looks different for each crew member and includes both individual and crew preparation. Our preparation includes rule study, video review, physical fitness, and mental focus.  In addition, taking care of our families is a critical part of preparation each week.

Perform: Once we have prepared, we can then perform. Our performance is not just when toe meets the leather for opening kick-off until the clock hits 0:00 in the 4^th quarter. Instead, performance includes our individual preparation during the week, crew meetings, and travel and hotel interactions. It also includes communication with clock operators, Red Hats, Sideline Replay, university staff, along with pregame, on-field, and post-game responsibilities. And do not forget, performance includes our interactions after the game.

Evaluate: Personal and crew evaluation of all aspects of our game performance—pregame, during game, and post-game. We review all parts of our performance to determine what was done well, what can be done better, and where the individual official and crew need the most help and improvement. Examples of evaluation include penalties/fouls called, mechanics, and communication with players and coaches.

Galatians 6: 3-4:  3 For if a man thinks himself to be something, when he is nothing, he deceives himself.  4 But let every man prove his own work, and then shall he have rejoicing in himself alone, and not in another.

In verse 3, Paul, the writer of Galatians, instructs us to avoid being conceited or prideful.  Pride is a great danger and always comes before a fall. Then in verse 4, Paul further instructs us to examine our own work instead of comparing ourselves against others. We can certainly review and learn from others, but not in an attitude of how much better or worse someone else is compared to me.  Our achievements are for our own personal or crew rejoicing, not to “show-boat” against others.

Looking at our crew’s rally cry “Do What We Do”, it’s a never-ending, inter-related cycle to Prepare, Perform, and Evaluate.  When we DO those things, we can most often rejoice in the results as Paul stated in Galatians 6: 4.

Without proper self-evaluation, failure is inevitable.

John Wooden

What's the Difference?

 As believers in Christ, we don’t get to choose neutral. (Revelation 3:  15-16)

The key to being a difference maker:  Consistency (keep your saltiness)—Matthew 5: 13

How to maintain saltiness:

·         Don’t make it more complicated than it should.

·         Guide by the way we live.

·         When people encounter us, we want them to worship Jesus.

How to lose saltiness:

·         Do nothing

·         Prioritize being liked by the world rather than being more like Jesus

 

As followers of Jesus, we leverage where God puts us to guide others to Him.

1)      God positions us to make a difference

a.       Where has God placed you and are you using your talents for Him—to make a difference?

2)      Primary purpose is to guide others to Jesus.

a.       Acts 8:  29-31 (Phillip lead by the Sprit to help the Ethiopian Eunuch understand scriptures)

 

What are things we can do to make a difference for the name of Jesus?

·         Speech/words

·         Serving

·         Devotions

·         Attention getter (Coins--2 Timothy 2: 5)

 

Story of David:  If you lose the battle with lions and bears, you don’t get to face Goliath.