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Profiles and stories about officials and people close to officiating.
Liven’ a Full Life: MLB Umpire Shane Livensparger
By Dan Ronan
Shane Livensparger has several uniforms in his closet. During the MLB season, the up-and-coming professional umpire wears the traditional MLB umpire uniform...
Chance Encounters of the Life-Changing Kind
Today, Jim Reynolds is one of MLB’s most accomplished umpires. His resume includes 16 postseason assignments, including two World Series, plus two All-Star games.
But...
VanderVelde Family Officiating Tree Reaches College Football
Mike VanderVelde always knew the apple wasn’t going to fall far from the tree.
The longtime West Michigan football and basketball official correctly guessed that...
His Plate is Full
By Dan Ronan
Dan Bellino’s phone, email and text messages never seem to stop. His schedule and life are packed full, 24/7/365. He’s been a...
Sirmons on the Mount
By Michael Clark
Published in Referee Magazine, April 2025
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sk any aspiring NCAA basketball official what the greatest assignment could be and 100% of them will...
Care-Frontation
By Dan Ronan
bob Delaney, a retired NBA referee and the Southeastern Conference special advisor for officiating development and performance, is one of the officiating...
FONZY
By Dan Ronan
major League Baseball umpire Alfonso Márquez was driving April 21, 2005, to an early season game in Tampa, Fla., when he got...
Referee Voices: Bert Smith
As part of the 2021 NASO Sports Officiating Summit @ Home, NCAAM basketball referee Bert Smith detailed for the virtual audience his career path...
Defining the “It” Factor
Rules knowledge, mechanics and making the right calls are important. Missing any of those elements can break your career, but having them won’t make...
Carl Cheffers: A Family Man
To Carl Cheffers, officiating has always been a family affair.
From being introduced to the avocation by his father, who had an impressive career as...
Tom O’Neill’s Long Haul
It’s difficult for an official working a national championship game to avoid the spotlight. But during the opening minutes of the 1997 NCAA men’s...
Gold Whistle Award Winner: UMPS CARE — Helping People is an Easy Call
It is often said every dark cloud has a silver lining. Good things come from the darkest places sometimes. In 1999, one of the...
Kelly Dine Covers All The Bases
The year 2020 was, well, not a great one for many people.
But at least Kelly Elliott Dine had wonderful memories of 2019 to comfort...
Ability, Not Disability
will Fried, a basketball official in the Wichita, Kan., area, recently earned a degree in conflict analysis and resolution, which on the surface makes...
Muscles and Details Lead to Mike Defee’s Mastery
We'll waste no time addressing Mike Defee’s Popeye-the-Sailor-style arms in an effort to satisfy one of the rages on social media these days.
Yes, perhaps...
Yellow Flags to Checkered
In 2005, Dick Kitchens, from the Gold Leaf Football Officials Association in Tifton, Ga., gave then-17-year-old Jeremiah Thalheimer of Tifton a shot at working...
Ron Garretson: A Life in Officiating
With the ‘Godfather of NBA officials’ as his father, Ron Garretson learned from one of the best in the business. Then he made a...
One and Nearly Done
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was both excited and nervous as I took the field for my first high school
game in late summer 2014. It was my third year...
NCAA Referee Keith Kimble Keeps It All In Perspective
Sure, basketball is important to NCAA men’s referee Keith Kimble. But that’s only 20 percent. It’s the other 80 percent of his life that...
It’s Black and White
H
ave you ever wondered why officials wear black and white stripes? In the early days of football, referees wore white dress shirts, bow ties...
Home Bruns
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Tiger Woods and Randy Bruns have more in common than you might expect. All three have been to the pinnacle of their...
Ron Groover is In the Groove
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Life sometimes can hinge upon a chance meeting. That’s how it worked for NCAA basketball official Ron Groover. From relaxing after a pickup basketball...
NFL Line Judge Jeff Bergman is All Business
Just as Jeff Bergman was starting to relax under the soothing stream of warm water that early spring afternoon in 1983, he was startled...
No Wake Zone
I don’t know if Little League Baseball, small-fry wrestling or other youth sports build or reveal character, but I do believe in the innocence of children. That belief...