Cohesion and unity are essential if a military unit is to function at peak efficacy. Those qualities carry over onto the football field.
Scott Jacobson has worked high school football for more than three decades. A resident of Rapid City, S.D., he’s also had a long military career and is a retired colonel in the South Dakota Army National Guard.
Last November, Jacobson wore the white hat for the South Dakota High School Activities Association (SDHSAA) Class AAA 11-player football championship game between Sioux Falls Jefferson and Harrisburg.
Every member of Jacobson’s crew has deep ties to the military. Umpire John Weber is a retired colonel in the National Guard. Line judge Mike Oster, who splits time with Jacobson as the referee, is a retired brigadier general. Scott Petrik, the alternate on the crew for the championship game, is also a retired brigadier general. Back judge Joe Jacobson, Scott’s brother, is a colonel. Linesman Jason McGough has never been in uniform but his father, Dan, retired as a master sergeant in the Army National Guard after 35 years of service.
It marked the fifth time since 2007 the crew was assigned to a state final (the others were in 2007, ’11, ’15 and ’20). Scott Jacobson and Oster have worked all five.
A seventh crewmate, Steve Siemonsma, is a colonel and chief of staff for the South Dakota Army National Guard. He’s worked a partial schedule in recent seasons and was not on the field for the crew’s most recent state championship assignment but worked with them in 2015.
The present configuration is a crew that has been based in the Black Hills region of South Dakota for four decades.
“There’s been a National Guard crew from South Dakota for as long as I can remember,” Scott Jacobson said. “When I started working full time with the National Guard, I wanted to get involved with refereeing high school football.
“My boss at the time was a colonel (later a brigadier general) named Dennis Krsnak. Dennis had a crew he’d been running for 20-some years. I just asked if I could be one of them. They took me under their wing, they invited me to a few of the games. I joined the crew for a few games and fell in love with it. I stayed with that crew until I retired (from the Guard), then I became the crew chief.”
Eventually Jacobson began building his own crew, one that included Oster.
“I had a bunch of guys that were friends of mine and loved sports and high school football,” Jacobson said. “I asked them to join my crew. Mike had already been officiating. He and I kind of partnered together and we asked a bunch of guys to start refereeing with us. Pretty soon, we had our own crew.”
Jacobson says the relationships the crew members forged with each other during their military careers carried over onto the football field.
“We all had a respect for each other and a trust for each other when we worked together (in the military),” he said. “When you work together in the military, you’re really a team. And when you get on the football field together, you all have a job to do. You’re a team, and I just feel that camaraderie in the military manifested itself into the football crew that we’ve become.”
Oster spent 36 years in the service before retiring. His service record includes everything from serving as a line installer with an artillery unit, to commanding a maintenance unit, to deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan. He eventually served as the assistant adjutant general for the South Dakota Army National Guard.
“I started officiating in 1990,” he said, “fresh out of college. I had been in the military for five years. I wanted to reconnect with (football) and the extra spending money didn’t hurt.”
The realities of officiating combined with the demands of military life necessitate having reinforcements available. Varsity football games in South Dakota are worked by five-official crews, but not every crew member is available every week.
“We’ve always had to have seven or eight folks on our crew,” Oster says, “because of military requirements, temporary duty or deployment. And then, like every other person who (officiates), most of our own kids are into sports, so often we’re taking time off or years off from officiating to watch our own kids play.”
In addition, there are National Guard requirements — specifically, a drill weekend once a month.
“The Friday night football game before a drill weekend can be problematic,” Oster said, “but we’ve made it work.”
Joe Jacobson, who joined the crew 22 years ago at his brother’s invitation, has worked four state finals. He says the emphasis on teamwork that is part and parcel to military life translates onto the football field.
“The military really works on being a team,” he said, “and really officiating on the football field is the same way. All those things about team dynamics come into play and that’s everything from the leadership aspect on the field sometimes that we all have to display.
“And really, communication. The communication piece is probably one of the biggest things that we deal with.”
“When duty calls or a mission comes up, one of our state missions or one of our federal missions, we have to react,” said Joe Jacobson, who missed the 2018 season while he was attending the Army War College in Carlisle, Pa. “One of the two or three other guys will step in. It’s not, ‘If you go.’ It’s truly been, ‘When you go.’”
The SDHSAA offers seven classes of football. There are three nine-player classifications and four in 11-player. For the first 15 years or so of Scott Jacobson’s career, the crew worked primarily nine-player games.
“We loved doing nine-player games on a Friday night in a small football town,” he said. “There’s nothing better.”
Scott Jacobson says the crew prided itself on the relationships it established with the schools for which they worked. That was especially important when the SDHSAA changed how assignments were made. For many years, crews were responsible for soliciting their own assignments. The SDHSAA assumed that task about a decade ago.
“Building relationships with athletic directors and coaches was super important,” he said, “and getting that trust and respect from them. Building those relationships with them I feel carried over to when the state took over the scheduling, because I feel like those ADs and coaches that had a good experience with our crew have asked to have us back.”
One of Joe Jacobson’s fondest officiating memories came on Veterans Day weekend in 2015 when the all-military crew worked the Class B 11-player state title game. During pregame ceremonies, the crew was introduced by name and position — and rank.
“It was pretty special,” Jacobson said. “We got a standing ovation.”
Oster sees parallels between his military and officiating careers. “When you’re officiating, I believe you’re serving your local community in some capacity,” he said, “because obviously, you can’t play the sport without the officials. It’s not an easy job and sometimes it’s not a fun job.
“But it’s a service, you’re providing a service without which the game would not be able to be played. I think because of the group that I am blessed to be affiliated with, they take it so seriously and they make such a concerted effort to do it right and to do the best job we possibly can knowing full well it will not be perfect. But that level they’re striving to be at, on top of providing a community service. Those two things together remind me how I strived to serve in uniform.”
Author Rick Woelfel, Philadelphia, is a freelance writer and softball umpire.
