Stars in stripes

You are wearing a shirt with vertical black-and-white stripes.

You have a whistle in your mouth.

You have a couple of basketball coaches and a bunch of parents and grandparents watching your every move, and whenever you blow that whistle and make a call, well, someone just might want to disagree with you.

You are a youth sports basketball referee.

Welcome to the jungle.

“It’s a great game,” retired high school basketball referee Steve Wolf said, “but it’s full of irritants.”

A player turns the ball over, and someone is irritated, be it that player, a coach or a fan. Two players crash into each other, and someone is irritated.

“And a referee’s call is an irritant,” Wolf said. “So I just try to teach these guys how to keep down the irritants.”

Wolf, a 1969 South Eugene High School and 1973 University of Oregon graduate with 35 years of high school basketball officiating experience, was hired this basketball season by Kidsports, the Eugene nonprofit youth sports organization, to recruit more adults with referee experience to work with teenage referees who officiate third- through sixth-grade basketball games.

Kidsports also has organized a first-ever celebrity basketball referee event on Sunday at Cesar Chavez Elementary School. Former UO basketball star and Northwest Christian University men’s basketball coach Luke Jackson and KEZI anchorman Matt Templeman are among those expected to don those “zebra” stripes and take a shot at officiating some third- and fourth-grade basketball games.

“It’s a challenging environment for a new referee, because the (players) are just learning, too,” said Bev Smith, Kidsports executive director and a former UO All-American basketball player as well as the school’s women’s basketball coach from 2001 to 2009.

It’s a lot of responsibility and a more intimidating environment than most teenagers have to deal with, said Smith, who hopes the celebrity referee event will provide some exposure that will move other adults in the community to step up and undergo the 10 hours of training it takes to become a Kidsports basketball official.

“And how do we channel that into an instructive environment versus a destructive environment?” Smith said. “Everyone’s ready to referee a game until you put a whistle in their mouth.”

Refs’ schedule requires hustle

Teenage referees sometimes officiate third- and fourth-grade games by themselves just as a matter of necessity.

“That’s difficult,” said Brendan Nesbitt, 19, who officiated Kidsports elementary school-age games as a Churchill High School sophomore three years ago and came back this year to do it again. “You can’t call everything, especially in that situation.”

Third-grade players often travel (don’t dribble) with the ball, but officials allow some violations, otherwise they’d be blowing their whistles nonstop.

On any given weekend in the Eugene-Springfield area, from January through the middle of March, there are about 130 Kidsports boys and girls basketball games, from third grade through high school ages, that are in need of referees.

With about 110 referees registered as independent contractors with Kidsports, most work multiple games every weekend.

There also are first- and second-grade games going on, but no score is kept in those games and parents volunteer to officiate them.

Pay for officiating third- through sixth-grade games is $12 per game. Most games last about an hour.

Pay for officiating seventh- and eighth-grade games is $16; it’s $23 per game for officiating sixth- through eighth-grade “gold” (top division) games; and $25 per game to officiate Kidsports high school-age games.

Last Saturday, Nesbitt worked a sixth-grade girls game between a Sheldon area team and a Pleasant Hill team at Monroe Middle School. Joining him was Mark Wolf, a son of one of Steve Wolf’s cousins.

Mark Wolf, 31, is a UO School of Law student who spent years officiating high school basketball games in Eugene and Portland.

Steve Wolf recruited Mark Wolf, along with about 25 other adults, to do Kidsports games this year and mentor younger referees such as Nesbitt.

“I understand they don’t get a lot of feedback, which is one of Steve’s missions,” Mark Wolf said after the game. “And if (Nesbitt) can take away just a couple of things today from me, and we can keep the coaches and parents happy … .”

While officiating high school basketball games at the state tournament level is packed with lots of pressure, doing it at the grade-school level has its own difficulties.

“Sometimes it’s hard to tell what a foul is,” Mark Wolf said.

Youth basketball players fall down a lot, he said, especially when two opposing players are fighting for the ball and the referee has to decide whether to call a “jump ball” or a foul or just let it go.

“And nobody likes to see their son or daughter fall down, so if we don’t call a foul, we better be sure why,” Mark Wolf said.

With 20 seconds left in the game, a Pleasant Hill player drove to the basket and jumped into the air with the ball as a Sheldon player appeared to get a hand on it. When the Pleasant Hill player landed with the ball, a Sheldon parent hollered that the player should have been whistled for traveling.

A Pleasant Hill fan, meanwhile, hollered that the Sheldon player should have been whistled for a foul.

For the most part, though, the game went about as smoothly as a sixth-grade basketball game can go.

Not all of them do so.

“No,” Nesbitt said with a grin. “It’s hit and miss, for sure.

“But it’s good to help out the community. And you have an opportunity to make some money, and it’s good to be a part of something you enjoy.”