WIESBADEN, Germany — Expect any arguments in this year’s European high school wrestling championships Friday and Saturday to be short and handled efficiently.
The reason?
At matside and on the mats this weekend will be two very experienced stateside referees, Ron Ackerman and Ed Homan, both of Minnesota.
Ackerman, the referees’ clinician for Minnesota high schools, and Homan, who with Ackerman next month will be working his 19th straight state wrestling tournament in the Gopher State, paid their airfare to work the event and help the personnel-depleted Kaiserslautern Officials Association referee the event properly. In addition, according to the KOA, they’ll be providing critiques of the performances of local officials at the meet.
KOA wrestling commissioner Al Shaff, who said that work assignments within the past month had removed five officials who worked last year’s tournament from his referee’s roster, has been in contact all season with Ackerman. He said when he saw how shorthanded the KOA would be, he decided to look into the idea of recruiting the two Minnesotans.
"So I talked with my referees, with most coaches and with Karen Seadore, DODDS-Europe athletic director, and received overwhelming enthusiasm," Shaff said. "They seemed excited to get more training, to watch experienced officials in action, and in some ways, to see how they stacked up with stateside officials."
KOA’s association with Ackerman had paid dividends earlier this season when he helped clarify rule interpretations that had gone uncorrected for years. As an example, DODDS referees had clung to the notion that the offensive wrestler could not pin himself, even when a risky move exposed his shoulders to the mat for the appropriate time. The belief was that since no one was holding his shoulders to the mat, he couldn’t be pinned.
Not so, it turns out. Although the defensive wrestler can’t score back points while his opponent is exposed, the offensive wrestler can hold himself down long enough to surrender the fall.
Some coaches have reservations about bringing in new refs.
"They might call things we don’t call over here, such as stalling or fleeing the mat, or wrestling the circle," veteran Brussels coach Joe Fiedler said in a phone call Saturday.
"I think it’s a great thing, but this might be the wrong weekend to bring new referees in," Baumholder coach Glenn Pilarowski said in an e-mail.
"The coaches and wrestlers are used to one style and a lack of calls being made all through the year. For example, stalling. Our wrestlers stall like crazy. In the States, you would see it called all day."
Shaff foresaw no problem.
"We’ll have a coaches meeting before the tournament and clarify things," he said.
