MONROE — At any given sporting event, the story is told from two perspectives: the winners’ and the losers’. The winning team’s victory is attributed to talented players and smart coaching, while the losing team questions the mistakes it made and how different decisions would have played out. But spectators and participants alike often forget umpires and referees, or what 45-year veteran official Tom Kammerude calls “the third team.”

Kammerude, based out of Blanchardville, and his decades of service are a common sight at many athletic events in southern Wisconsin. Bob Boyle, a former teacher at Shullsburg, has put in 55 years with the WIAA in softball, football, basketball and baseball. Dwayne Schober, a Blanchardville graduate that went on to become an athletic director at New Glarus, recently retired from officiating football, baseball, basketball and softball after 48 years. Although Roger Homb, an umpire and referee out of Monroe, gave up basketball and baseball after 35 years, he can still be found on a softball diamond in the spring and summer. Likewise, his nephew Loren Homb, a former coach at Argyle, still travels southern Wisconsin to officiate volleyball, track and cross country after 45-plus years.

Despite getting up in age — most of these officials being in their late 60s and early 70s — they kept up the gig for their own enjoyment.

“I love being on a field,” Kammerude said. “To do it as long as I did, at the level that I did, you have to love your craft. I liked seeing great sports and being around really great athletes. That’s the fun part of it.”

FROM THE BOTTOM UP

Before they started officiating, many of these umpires and referees were athletes and coaches themselves.

Kammerude played football, baseball and basketball in high school. After college, he coached the Pecatonica freshman football team, seventh- and eighth-grade basketball team and managed the Home Talent team. 

Boyle, who graduated from Darlington, played football, basketball and baseball. He then transitioned to the athletic director at Shullsburg, where he stayed for 20 years. During his tenure there, he coached varsity track and field and junior high basketball. 

Roger Homb played baseball, ran track and wrestled. After high school, he coached his sons Aaron and Adam to a state championship in Bantam hockey.

At one point in his career, Loren Homb was the varsity volleyball, girls basketball and track and field coach in the same school year.

Like the rest, Schober played sports all throughout high school, coached in adulthood and transitioned to officiating.

“In the beginning, I was always involved in playing sports in the fall, winter and spring as a student-athlete at Blanchardville,” Schober said. “I had an interest in continuing sports, so I started doing JV basketball games for area high schools during my college career. After going to college, I was the head football, track and softball coach at New Glarus.”

The sports background, along with lower-level games leading up to WIAA high school games, led to decorated careers that took these men to some of the best sports venues in Wisconsin.

In February, the Wisconsin Baseball Coaches Association named Boyle the Umpire of the Year. In his time, he’s done games at UW-Platteville and Dodgeville, which hosted the 10-state Babe Ruth tournament.

Kammerude has 20 years experience in college football, seven in college baseball, and one year with the Madison Mallards and Beloit Snappers (Sky Carp). He and Schober were also on the chain gang for Badger football games.

Loren Homb has officiated eight volleyball tournaments, three state basketball tournaments and volunteered for 30 years at the state track meet, where he was the master starter twice. He’s had the opportunity to work at the Resch Center, Kohl Center, Field House, Alliant Center and Bradley Center. 

These accolades wouldn’t be possible, though, without the knowledge and guidance of the veteran officials that came before them.

GIVING BACK

When Loren Homb started officiating volleyball, he worked with Jim Hein from Juda. For the next 26 years, the pair worked six state volleyball tournaments. Now, Loren Homb is the mentor to Barb Keegan of Monroe. Reflecting on being mentoring and mentoring, Loren Homb sees a lot of similarities in both roles and relationships.

“Jim was the veteran, and he was always up on the ladder. I felt more comfortable being down. The first time we went to state, I told him he was going to be up. The same thing with Barb,” Loren Homb said. “She’s very comfortable with being down. When we went to state, she said she wanted me up. She didn’t want the pressure up there.”

Roger Homb also sees the give-and-take relationship of being a mentor. After learning from the veterans from his time, he gives those same lessons to newer officials.

“When I first started — the new kid on the block — everybody I worked with had been around for a while,” Roger Homb said. “I was fortunate enough to have a lot of great mentors — Frank Dillon, Gil Jelinek. You learn a lot. Hopefully I’ve passed that along to some of the younger guys I’ve worked with over the years.”

While Roger and Loren Homb work with other adults, Boyle, Schober and Kammerude have worked directly with their local high schools to train young athletes interested in an officiating future. 

This summer, Boyle worked baseball games with Darlington junior Aiden Dempsey-Strang.

“He’s a good, young official,” Boyle said. “I was impressed with his pose. He’s doing well. We mesh well together. He was appreciative of the help. I hope someday he’ll do that for somebody.”

Because of his role as the New Glarus athletic director, Schober often worked with his students to get them started. Meanwhile, Kammerude, with the assistance of Pecatonica baseball head coach Jim Strommen, has been giving umpire clinics to Pecatonica’s baseball and softball teams for the last 10 years. 

Despite efforts at the local level to recruit new, younger officials, Wisconsin has seen an officials shortage in the last couple of years.

SHORTAGE OF OFFICIALS, SOLUTIONS

“The WIAA said they saw a significant drop in just a few years in the number of registered licensed officials in the state, going from 9,249 in the 2019-2020 school year down to 6,071 in the 2021-2022 year,” a CBS58 report stated in August 2022.

As the number of licensed officials is decreasing, the average age of officials is on the rise. Rural Mutual Insurance Company, which works with the WIAA each season to present the Sportsmanship Award, stated that “there are more officials over 60 than under 30 in many areas.”

These factors have caused problems for local athletic directors looking for officials to referee their games.

“It’s hard to play without officials or coaches,” Boyle said.

These problems stemmed from recruitment strategies, retainment and time commitment. However, the largest problem, some officials argue, are comments from coaches and fans and the inability for new officials to handle the criticism.

“If you aren’t born with thick skin, it’s tough,” Roger Homb said. “I have had a couple of parents get in my face after a sporting event.”

Veteran officials, Schober argues, were born in a generation where criticism was common in sports — coaching and officiating.

“I’m not sure our society is developing the officiating mentality in children,” Schober said. “When I grew up in the 60s and 70s, criticism, being pushed and the drive from your coaches was part of it. Success and failure were part of the equation.”

In addition to these philosophies Schober learned, he also views criticism from fans, players and coaches as expected. As a former coach and athletic director, he knows how much dedication and time is put into a game. When a call doesn’t go in the favor of a coach, their passion spills out in heated words.

“To me, I didn’t mind them airing their grievance,” Schober said. “Coaches and their players put a lot of time into getting ready for the Friday night football game. They are out there to win. So, when something goes against them or they think they’ve been short-sighted, I expect them to be a little upset.”

For Loren Homb, he’s learned not to focus on the complaints at all. Rather he ignores them and focuses on the task at hand: officiating the game to the best of his ability for the kids.

“Others ask how I put up with people yelling at me. I really don’t pay attention because I need to be focused on the game,” Loren Homb said. “I can’t be focused on what someone is saying behind me. It’s being light-hearted as well. You can’t take it seriously.”

While the WIAA ramped up their recruiting efforts in recent years — placing officiating ads on jumbotrons at state and offering free registration for high school kids — some officials have solutions of their own.

Some remedies include making ejected fans officiate a game before returning to the stands, or instilling stricter suspension rules for coaches, yet a common thread has been more clinics and officials’ clubs at high schools and universities.

While studying at UW-La Crosse, Boyle got his start in umpiring at an officials’ club, while Loren Homb attended his first camp at St. Norbert in the 1990s. Along the same lines, Schober suggested programs at the high school level through physical education classes.

HOW TO GET STARTED

For high school and college students and young adults thinking about officiating, the best resource is another official.

“If somebody thinks about officiating, talk to someone that’s officiating,” Loren Homb said. “I’d be willing to talk to anyone that wants to get involved.”

While the base pay varies from school to school, the low end is $40 for lower-level games like freshman and JV, while varsity games could garner $80 or more. Most schools also reimburse for mileage.

“Where else are you going to go work for two to four hours and make $100?” Kammerude said. “If you want to go to Burger King and McDonald’s to flip burgers for $15, go ahead. You could go work the intramural programs at college and make $150. It’s something to do.”

Visit officials.wiaawi.org for more information on getting started.