Student referees help run intramural sports smoothly

There are three things guaranteed in life: taxes, death and blaming your team’s loss on a bad call by the official.

IU offers as many as 20 intramural sports with about 60 referees making sure all of them run smoothly.

With all of these players and officials participating in vigorous competition, there is always the inevitability of disagreement between the two sides.

Junior Jillian Formanski is in her third year as an intramural official.

“There is always conflict and some very intense players,” she said.

Some players claim they do have a right to get occasionally upset at the officials.

Mark Miller and Bill Fitzgerald, both freshman intramural volleyball players, agree that the officiating could be better. Fitzgerald said he remembered two or three particularly “bad calls.”

However, during intramural sports season at IU, the relationship between players and officials is consistently positive, as cooler heads usually prevail over Johnny McEnroe-esque outbreaks, freshman Jessica Curtis said. Curtis recently started refereeing intramural volleyball games at the School of Health, Physical Education, and Recreation.

“Some people can be rude but respectful,” she said. “They will argue a call but know that I have the final word.”

Intramural games across the campus reflect this theme of participants playing with intensity but knowing the lines which cannot be crossed when it comes to arguing with an official. Players have a mutual understanding with each other and the officials, and they are there to compete, not argue.

Despite having to endure discontent from players all season, students continue to don the whistle and zebra stripes year after year.

Senior Kristin Lokken is a head official for intramural sports and started as an official in her freshman year. She said that if an official stays on staff for multiple years, they can be promoted to head official, a supervisor who oversees six regular referees on a given shift, and also a job that has its own perks.

“It is one of the best paid jobs on campus,” she said. “We take anyone, put them through several training sessions and then assign them to a position.”

Curtis said she sees other benefits of becoming a referee.

“It helps you gain confidence and build character,” she said.

But Curtis said there is one huge benefit to her job:

“I get to be around the sport I love,” she said.