Strikes, fouls and traveling are all part of the job for sports officials employed at Arnold Air Force Base

  • Published
  • By Bradley Hicks
  • AEDC/PA
ARNOLD AIR FORCE BASE, Tenn. --  When the game is on the line, it takes a brave soul to block out cheers and jeers of the fans in the bleachers and call the foul, strike or first down that sends one team home with a rousing victory and the other to the showers with a crushing defeat.

Several AEDC team members at Arnold Air Force Base have been courageous enough to don the stripes and take up their whistles to serve as sports officials on the various fields of play at the high school and collegiate levels.

Those at Arnold who have been charged with ensuring the rules of the game are followed and calling it right down the middle agree sports officiating requires a keen eye, good judgment, impartiality, dedication, thick skin and a love of the game.

Mike Hollowell, Operations & Maintenance Functional Manager for the Test Operations and Sustainment contractor at Arnold, began umpiring baseball in 1980, officiating football in 1989 and refereeing basketball in 2004. He said serving as a sports official allows him to give back to the games he enjoyed playing growing up.

“I enjoy being back on the field and that Friday night atmosphere,” he said.

Like the athletes, sports officials must train to prepare for an upcoming season. Potential officials are required to attend local and state association meetings, take part in training sessions and complete state-required online courses and quizzes. Also like the players, officials must earn their spots on the court or field by exhibiting satisfactory performance during pre-season scrimmages.

The possibility of upsetting players, coaches or a portion of the crowd is part of the game when it comes to sports officiating, but this is not the only difficult aspect of the job. According to TOS Safety, Health and Environment Manager Dick Nugent, who has been officiating football for more than two decades after having previously called baseball and basketball, the combination of work at Arnold, the scheduling of the games, and the preparation necessary to officiate often leaves little time for much else during the season.

“All meetings are at night or weekends,” Nugent said. “Games are at night. Occasionally we have to leave work early to travel to an away game. All of us spend time reviewing and studying the rules and mechanics for our positions worked on the field.”

Maverick Mosley, a journeyman boilermaker who has been employed at Arnold for 39 years, began officiating sports in 1987. He initially officiated baseball, basketball and football but now solely officiates football. Mosley said he has typically been able to get to games after work over the years, but he must occasionally use vacation time to get to matchups outside of the area.

“It’s not always easy, but it’s fun and it’s a stress reliever for me,” Hollowell said. “It’s a commitment and you’re away from your family a lot.”

But those at Arnold who have served as sports officials concur it’s worth it. When asked what he enjoys most about officiating, Samuel Northcutt, an engineering technician who has been employed at Arnold for 45 years and who began officiating in 1982, said it’s both the exercise and being around different people.

“I enjoy the comradery and friendship that you develop with other officials,” Hollowell said. “My best friends are officials.”

Mosley echoed this sentiment.

“I enjoy all the people I meet and the referees I work with,” he said. “I also enjoy the comradery we have as a family.”

Like Hollowell and Mosley, Nugent said the thing he enjoys most about officiating is the friendships that those in perhaps the most polarizing position on the field develop over time.

“I enjoy the comradery among the officials and working with the kids and coaches,” he said.
With a little more than 140 years of combined officiating experience between them, Hollowell, Mosley, Northcutt and Nugent have witnessed jubilation and dejection among scores of players, coaches and fans. But the quartet has also seen their fair share of incidents that are more out of bounds.

While officiating basketball, Northcutt said he once saw a coach receive a technical foul – a penalty administered when a player or coach gets a little too vehement in their rebuttal of an official’s call – when that coach’s team was winning by 20 points.

Because of his job, Nugent has moved around the country. As a result, he has worked in six different officiating associations during his time as a sports official.

It was while working a football game in another state that Nugent witnessed a dispute between a coach and official devolve into fisticuffs.

“In Las Vegas, I was working a game and witnessed a coach and a member of the chain crew get into a fight,” he said.

Mosley added he recently witnessed a memorable sideline scrap while officiating a football contest between two nearby high school squads.

“The most outrageous thing, I say, happened this year,” he said. “As we finished the Hillsboro versus Beech game, at the end of the game a fight broke out on the sidelines. The most unusual thing about this was the Hillsboro team was fighting each other.”

Hollowell said of some of the things he has heard during his time as a sports official simply cannot be repeated. However, there are three things he won’t tolerate from a player, coach or fan and that’s “don’t talk about my mother, wife or daughters.”

“The thing that amazes me most is the number of fans that don’t know or understand the rules,” he said.

Hollowell reminds his football crew every Friday night before they take the field to “call what you see, see what you call, but don’t call everything you see.”

Hollowell and Mosley were recently selected to officiate the Division II, Class A 2018 Tennessee Secondary School Athletic Association State Championship game in Cookeville.