MEN IN S TRIP ES High school officials call the game for fun
MOORE — By the time the men in striped uniforms step onto the artificial turf, the stadium is starting to buzz.
It’s 6 p.m. on a cloudless Thursday night at Moore Schools Stadium, 65 minutes before scheduled kickoff. Edmond Memorial has started its pregame routine west of the 50-yard line with Westmoore going on the east.
Music from rapper Lil Uzi Vert’s song “Sauce It Up” overtakes the stadium as fans trickle into the stands.
“This is fun,” Harold Hill says, a smile forming moments before he makes his way onto the field. “I actually do this for fun.”
Known as the “white hat,” Hill is the crew chief of a fiveman officials crew that will oversee this football game.
They’ll make split-second calls. They’ll leave some folks enraged, some satisfied. They’ll take verbal beatings. They’ll receive little praise. Meanwhile, they’ll hope to go unnoticed.
And yet, the blackand-white stripes remain vital on Friday nights.
Without them, the games would not go on.
Most work 40-hour weeks at their full-time jobs and some weeks they officiate twice. Some even spend Saturdays on a college field.
Long days and nights for little pay, yelling but often a lot of reward fills the life of an official.
“The extra money is nice, but it’s negligible,” backjudge Jason DeBerry says standing at midfield. “I look forward to falls just to do Friday night stuff. We do stuff during the week, but this is what it’s all about.”
•••
Ten minutes into the game, Harold Hill throws his flag for the first time as a Westmoore defender hits Edmond Memorial’s punter.
An easy call he’s made too many times to count.
Hill is in his 19th season officiating for the Oklahoma Secondary School Activities Association. He’s called hundreds of games — big and small — and is respected around the state.
Hill spent his early years officiating intramural sports and in the military. Now retired at 56 after 31 years with the Department of Justice, he’s an armed security guard at multiple federal buildings in downtown Oklahoma City.
Friday nights are a treat, and not just for the
whistle and yellow flag he carries.
His son, Elgie, is a crew member.
“I was telling him he could make a little extra money,” Harold said with a noticeable amount of pride.
Sitting nearby in a bronze metal chair inside the Moore girls soccer coaches office before the game with a smile equaling his dad, Elgie interrupted. “The main thing was to spend time with him and do our thing.”
Elgie, 36, is an IT worker with his own big dreams on the football field.
He’s a graduate and state champion from Millwood who briefly played at Langston University. Five years ago, he joined the crew to be around his old man.
Then he fell in love with his second job.
Elgie wants to officiate on Saturdays. In August, he took the first step toward the Big 12 by officiating junior college games in Kansas.
Four-hour drives both ways now fill his Saturdays. He’s already worked out every day —
aiming to gain the muscular look of an official — completed a 40-hour workweek and officiated possibly multiple high school games.
“I love the game of football,” Elgie Hill said. “It challenges you if you really love it. I may not get back until 1 or 2 o’clock in the morning. You’ve got to have some kind of love for it to keep doing it.”
•••
As soon as the Edmond Memorial defender’s helmet is pulled off in a mid-play skirmish, Glen Williams throws the flag. There was no other option.
Williams has seen the play many times as an 18-year veteran at umpire, the position in the middle of the defense that fit so well after he ended his playing days in a semipro league.
He remembers the moment he found his way back to football. His son had just started playing for Norman. At a scrimmage, Williams shadowed other officials and was immediately put into the middle of the field.
“It just felt like home,” Williams said. “It just stuck.”
Now 50 years old, Williams is a local Division II umpire on Saturdays and a fill-in for Big 12 games. He started that nearly a decade ago.
“We all want to move up, I think,” Williams said. “That’s always the hope.”
••• Trailing the kick return, Jason DeBerry quickly throws the yellow flag for a block in the back. A touchdown is called back.
He stops to jot down the penalty in a notepad he sticks in his back pocket.
DeBerry is a fill-in for Hill’s crew, replacing an injured member as the backjudge. The next night, he’ll be back with his normal crew for a game in Sulphur.
The 31-year-old thinframed banker originally from Ardmore can’t get enough of high school football.
“I didn’t get to play a whole lot,” DeBerry said. “But I wanted to get involved back in the game and the camaraderie of working with the same guys week in and week out.”
DeBerry has worked with Hill’s crew just a few times in his seven years as an official. His first game as a rookie was a varsity eight-man game in Edmond. Some officials wait a handful of years to reach even that level.
But DeBerry is part of a faster-paced group.
He gained quick experience learning from veterans then. Now, even on a different crew he’s hoping to pass that along.
“There’s not a whole lot of 31-year-olds that are wanting to do this,” DeBerry said. “I think it’s important that we try to encourage younger folks, guys coming out of high school.
“We need guys like this that have been around football.”
•••
Sam Coldiron barely moves as Westmoore coach Lorenzo Williams emphatically questions the penalty in his ear. Coldiron did not throw the flag or see the foul.
But the 26-year-old is assigned Westmoore’s sideline in the first half, where he must communicate with Jaguars coaches.
He’s the young pup of the group, but he’s equally prepared for the evening’s pressures.
Coldiron began officiating in a local youth association as a teenager in Missouri City, Texas, thanks to recruitment from his next-door neighbor.
He officiated intramurals at the University of Oklahoma. Now, he still has the look of a smoothfaced teenager in his third season with the OSSAA and second with Hill’s crew.
“The cheesy answer is I love the game, but I do because you’re right on the field,” Coldiron said. “I love football, the side money doesn’t hurt and the excuse I gave when I refereed intramurals in college is I get paid to exercise. That’s always helpful.”
Coldiron is one of few around his age in the state officiating at the varsity level.
Coldiron was the Oklahoma City Association’s Rookie of the Year three years ago. That year and each year since he and all other officials have had to attend three local rules meetings, one state rules meeting, pass a written test and gained enough positive ratings to continue with playoff certification.
More than 1,100 officials are registered, but a shortage remains. The OSSAA has ramped up recruiting efforts as fear that older officials will retire with few replacements becomes more and more real.
“I think the biggest part of it is time commitment, harassment from parents and some of it is recruitment,” Coldiron said. “If I had to guess the average age for our association in football it has to be in the 40s or 50s, and those guys aren’t getting any younger.
“It’s rough and we definitely need the people, but how you get the people here is the question we keep asking ourselves.”
This group of five is a mix of the past, present and future. With them, hope follows as they arrive nearly two hours early together, dress and discuss the night ahead in cramp spaces. Then they go to work.
Afterward, they change and head home. Another week together will soon follow.
“We usually stay together,” Harold Hill said. “as long as we can stand each other.”