Kyle Berger, a former coach and wrestler at North Penn High School, is a PIAA wrestling official who will be contributing periodic columns.
By Kyle Berger
In what is probably a news flash to no one, being a wrestling official is not my primary job.
I teach television production and journalism at North Penn High School, and a big component of being a teacher is attending professional development workshops during in-service days and over the summer break.
The reason for attending professional development workshops is to pick up pointers on the best practices in the classroom, to learn new skills, or to simply improve yourself as an educator.
Likewise, wrestling officials owe it to themselves to better themselves through professional development. There are no “in-service” days for wrestling officials, but a lot of our professional development occurs during the season.
For example, every week during the season, the officiating chapter with which I am affiliated meets to discuss a different topic. One week, it’s stalling. The next, it’s illegal holds and maneuvers. Another meeting might be about postseason officiating.
During these meetings, we always talk about things that have occurred during the past week or so. The purpose is to help us all get better at what we do. Perhaps a situation that happened during another official’s match will occur during a match you are officiating later that week.
At various times throughout the year, we receive emails from our state rules interpreter that help clarify some of the vagaries in wrestling rules (and there are a lot of those!). This is especially helpful when a new rule has been put in place, such as the random draw affecting the order of weigh-ins.
One of the biggest things I do to improve my officiating is simply watching a ton of wrestling throughout the year. Thanks to my DVR at home, I have hours of wrestling to watch in my spare time. The Big Ten Network carries a few matches per week, PCN has a “match of the week” every weekend, and websites such as flowrestling.com are an endless library of great matches to watch.
The biggest difference between what I’m watching and what you’re watching is that I’m looking at the calls the official is making and putting myself in that official’s shoes. Would I make the same call or not? Would I be in the same position to make that call?
Much like the wrestlers we officiate, we have the same philosophy: If you’re not improving, you’re getting worse. Therefore, it’s contingent upon every official to continue to do whatever is necessary to make himself better.
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