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The tales of sports officials all have a similar beginning. They tend to be a part of a group who find themselves in college or recently graduated and in dire need of additional income. More importantly, they all have a love of sports and want to remain involved no matter how far removed from their playing days they might be.
And Colorado has seen a fair share of officials who start at the high school level develop into collegiate and professional level referees. In fact, many former Colorado high school refs have donned the stripes for some of the most important games in recent sports history.
But like any profession, they didn’t just start at the top. These men who used to prowl high school football fields and gyms began their careers at an entry-level position.
NCAA basketball official Dave Hall was one such individual. Hall had been recruited to play baseball for the University of Colorado. The scholarship money wasn’t as much as he or and any other player would’ve liked, so he was forced to look elsewhere for additional cash.
“At the University of Colorado, I played baseball for Irv Brown,” Hall said. “I was a baseball player on a partial scholarship and he said to a bunch of the freshman and sophomores, ‘If you want to earn extra money you have two choices. You can either go work in the cafeteria and clear tables, or I have some basketball officiating assignments at a very low-level — fifth grade girls and fifth grade boys.'”
And so began Hall’s journey, one which spanned many, many high school games. He maintained a job as a ref through his college years and stayed involved at the high school level after graduation. His chance to work the next level came through Brown, the man who started him on the path in the first place.
The University of Northern Colorado was one refs short for a varsity basketball game, so the call was made to Hall.
“They were independent, Division II and someone couldn’t make it so Irv asked me if I wanted to go up to Greeley,” Hall said. “I was 23 and the players were just about my age. That was my first college game.”
And the snowball effect continued. Eventually Hall began working games for the Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference and soon made his way to the Division I level. Like any official, whether it by at the high school, college or professional level, Hall did have outside employment. He worked as an accountant for a software company, but retired on Dec. 31, 2003 and now focuses solely on his work as a referee.
On top of working national championship games in the NCAA tournament, he boasts a résumé that would garner the attention of any sports fan.
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“The most notable (championship game) was probably the 2000 championship game between Michigan State and Florida,” Hall said. “Recently, even though it wasn’t a Final Four game, but was probably the game of the tournament, was the Elite Eight game between Kentucky and Notre Dame. It had the record for the biggest audience in the NCAA in the history of the sport. It was a big time game for not being a Final Four game.”
On the football front, Colorado Springs native Greg Burks is a another official who got started on a high school level, but now holds national recognition. The former three-sport ref (baseball, football and basketball) had the honor of serving as the referee for the very first college football playoff championship game this past January.
“That was a truly amazing opportunity to have,” Burks said. “That was bigger than life. I had so much fun doing it and doing the first one; doing all of that was incredible.”
Like Hall, Burks attended college at the University of Colorado and upon graduating he figured out that he wanted to remain involved in sports and pocket some additional cash. Not once during the process did he think of it as something he would stick with as long as he did.
“When I first started doing it, my goal was to do a state championship game,” Burks said. “That was the top; that was a far as I ever thought. Like other things in life, once you start doing something and become involved with something and become passionate about it, more opportunities open up.”
NFL back judge Terrence Miles can certainly relate to that passion. Following in his father’s footsteps, Miles got into officiating when he graduated from college in 1993. His career began as a referee for youth football at Thornton City Park.
He eventually worked his way up through learning at camps and taking advantage of assignments at higher levels. It was in his fifth year of officiating that he was given eight varsity-level games, a feat he considered a major accomplishment.
It wasn’t until he saw one of the most bizarre plays he ever witnessed that he realized he had come into his own as an official.
“There was one play I had at All-City Stadium,” Miles said. “I was working on the sideline and the ball gets thrown over to that area and it gets tipped. It’s about to hit the ground and hits the guy’s foot and he catches it on the deflection and just runs the other way. I’ve never seen a play like that and I’ve been to the NFL level.”
Miles saw the develop right in front of him and knew he was positioned right where he was supposed to be. It was that moment that told him he was going to be good at what he did. As he continued to work, the leagues that he worked for began to agree and in Feb. 2015, Miles walked into University of Phoenix Stadium as a back judge for the Super Bowl.
But he was hardly the first Colorado-based official that had reached that level. In all his years of officiating, Tom Fincken had been named to an official for three separate Super Bowl games. He worked on the crews for Super Bowls XXIX (San Francisco vs San Diego), XXXII (Green Bay vs New England) and XXXIV (St. Louis vs Tennessee).
Getting to that point was obviously a career defining point for Fincken, but he never lost sight of where he came from or the work he put in to reach the top level of officiating.
“If nothing else, (I learned) to be humble and appreciate you come from,” Fincken said. “It’s still the game of football and you’re still going to have to officiate it and hopefully one of the things you’ve learned over the years — from the high schools, from the small colleges — is you have to go back to basics and follow the mechanics.”
But the key to learning those mechanics, is starting at a young level and working up. That’s the common theme that Hall, Burks, Miles and Fincken all preach. Kids these days might live in a different time, but a recent college graduate who wants to remain involved with sports in some way is nothing new to society.
“You get so many student-athletes who finally reach the apex of the pyramid where they can’t play anymore at a competitive level,” Hall said. “The organized part of the sport is gone and they get kicked out of the pyramid. Now, they still have a passion and they love sports. If they want to continue that love of the game in whatever that sport is, one of the ways you can do that is through officiating.”
Burks added: “The challenge of refereeing is so formidable that (you’ll thrive) if you like that kind of challenge and you like being around the game. For me that was a big factor, having a game to go to and to be involved with.”
The prospect of starting at the youth or high school level isn’t the dream job that any high-profile official aimed for right away. But with any job in any industry, continuing to work and to get better paved the way for some to reach a level that in some ways, they still feel like they’re dreaming to this day.
“I just have to think to myself as a Denver kid from Park Hill, I just worked the Super Bowl,” Miles said. “If you would’ve told me I’d do that 20 years ago when I started at Thornton City Park, I would’ve said you were crazy.”
Tom Robinson, the officials liaison at the Colorado High School Activities Association. A high school teacher and coach, Robinson started working high school football games in 1969 after encouragement to do so from his former high school coach and mentor, Guy Gibbs.
“It was the typical way most officials get started: with a mentor who does more than just plant the seed,” Robinson said. “They lead by example and constantly follow up with how you are progressing.”
Robinson received a letter in the mail in 1975 from the Western Athletic Conference asking if he would accept working two football games at Utah State University and the Air Force Academy and the rest is history. He went on to work a full schedule for the WAC and the Western Athletic Conference as a Head Linesman for 12 years and a Referee for 13 years.
Robinson is currently a replay official for the CFO West (Big 12 and MWC). He has worked numerous bowl games during his ongoing career.
John Adams, former Supervisor of Officials for the WAC and the Secretary of the NCAA Football Rules, was the instrumental voice that garnered Robinson prestigious recognition in the The National Football Foundation and College Hall of Fame as an Outstanding College Football Official in December 2008.
The list of names is very long one of officials that got their start working for the Colorado High School Activities Association and worked professionally or at the NCAA Division I level.
Some of those currently working are: Scott Novak (football), Kent Payne (football), Verne Harris (basketball), Bob Staffen (basketball), Lonnie Dixon (basketball), Ryun Mendoza (wrestling), Fred Marjerrison (wrestling), Ben Keefer (wrestling), Bob Keltie (hockey) and Randy McCall (basketball). The list goes on.
For more information on how to become an official, email Tom Robinson at the CHSAA office (trobinson@chsaa.org) or visit the Officials Page.