Line judge Gary Kingston works the Carson Graham Eagles and South Kamloops Titans game during the high school AA wild card round football action at UBC Thunderbird Stadium last weekend. Kingston has been working the sidelines for 18 months as an official.

Photograph by: Les Bazso, Vancouver Sun, Vancouver Sun




Yeah, that's me in the striped officials shirt in the picture accompanying this article. Whistle in my mouth and appearing -- embarrassingly, I'll acknowledge -- like I'm poised to take flight.
I believe I was actually signalling an incomplete pass.
Now, I hear what some of you who know me a little are thinking: "He's blind! He's deaf! And he can't make a decision to save his life. Who would give him a whistle and a flag?"
And, yes, the last time I was on a football field without a pen and notebook in hand was 37 years ago as an undersized, hotheaded centre for Coquitlam's Centennial Centaurs. So short-tempered, I'm ashamed to admit, that I fought my teammate and best friend, Chris O'Connor, on the sidelines during a game at old Empire Stadium -- to the great horror of our shocked mothers sitting in the stands -- on the practice field and in the locker-room.
Apparently, the goody two-cleats O'Connor didn't like my attitude.
I was also ejected from a game in Bellingham, Wash., for throwing a punch to the gut of a blitzing linebacker and was once kicked out of the huddle by my own quarterback for mouthing off.
I'd like to think I've mellowed and matured over the years. (My editor-in-chief might think otherwise this week, but that's a whole other story.) So I'm quite comfortable in policing the testosterone-fuelled emotions of a new generation of high school footballers.
How did I wind up as a whistle-toting zebra? Let me start by saying this is not an attempt to horn in on the territory of our sports department's crazy-ass jock/journalist Ian (Hardbody) Walker, who has famously written about Plimpton-esque stints as a Vancouver Canadians outfielder and a B.C. Lions running back.
This is for real. I bought all the gear and everything.
LOVE OF THE GAME
Football has been my favourite sport since pulling on helmet and pads in Grade 9. And nearly four decades after last playing -- Langara College had a journalism program, but no football team, unfortunately -- I thought it might be cool to get back on the field, to give back, in some small way, to the sport I love.
Despite a couple of dreaded inadvertent whistles, and even with a coach occasionally bellowing in my ear about a missed holding call or a pass interference flag that should never have been thrown, it's been a whole lot of fun. Funny at times, too. And a huge eye-opener.
I won't pretend that the speed and skill of high school varsity football players matches that of those who play at the CIS or CFL level. But the game is intense, some of the hitting hellacious and it gives you an appreciation for how difficult a sport it can be to officiate.
(Of course, that doesn't mean we high school guys don't chortle about the miscues of CFL officials. When a linesman officiating a mid-season B.C. Lions' game quick-whistled a play in which receiver Stephen Black spun away from an attempted tackle, it was a hot topic at the next week's games. "Even I know enough," I told guys, "not to blow the play dead that early.") I got started 18 months ago when I mentioned to Farhan Lalji, a TSN reporter and head coach of the New Westminster Hyacks, that I'd thought for some time that I might be interested in officiating. Within 24 hours, I had been contacted by the B.C. Football Officials Association. They were desperate.

"We can always use more," says Lower Mainland allocator Jamie Graham, who has a pool of about 65 officials to slot into spots on four-and five-man crews for a typical week of 35-40 Grade 8, junior varsity and varsity games.
Considering many guys hold down full-time jobs, it's a huge juggling act for Graham.
"Every year there are more and more games and the number of officials never seems to keep up. Our top end is, I don't want to say old, but not as young as I'd like."
Anyway, after an introductory clinic, a season-opening meeting and the purchase of a striped shirt and a pair of those snow white knickers, I was set.
(Quick aside: At that first meeting, four of us newbies had to stand up and explain why we wanted to officiate high school football. One slightly chunky guy said he hoped running the sideline might help him get in shape, which sparked a loud round of snickering given that a few of the veterans are rather, uh ... round. Put it this way: Not many of our officials, including me, will ever be mistaken for Ed Hochuli, the buff NFL referee nicknamed Hochules for his shirt-straining biceps and washboard stomach.)
As a first-year official earning $40 a game, you work the sideline as head linesman or line judge for Grade 8 and JV games. And it can be overwhelming at first. Counting 11 on defence, watching for encroachment and false starts, ensuring the offence has seven players on the line of scrimmage, picking up pass or run keys, watching for passes that are actually laterals, ruling on pass interference, spotting the ball and whistling the play dead, seeing holding or blocks in the back.
And, most importantly, proper positioning so you don't get run over.
"I've seen some truly ugly stuff," says 20-year veteran Greg Barnes of sideline collisions.
The head linesman is also in charge of the chain crew. Mostly it's students -- detention servers, as some officials call them.
Or, there are the home team coaches that surely must be messing with you by giving you girls in skirts and black-patent shoes who don't know a first down from a prom gown and are more interested in texting and socializing with friends than flipping the down marker.
Nothing, though, quite tops my very first game, a Grade 8 contest at a school I won't name. I got a very reluctant, disinterested varsity student accompanied by two younger boys. After giving them the pre-game spiel -- "You don't move until we get a signal from the referee so we don't lose the line of scrimmage before possible penalty enforcement" -- I turned around after a flag on the third play of the game to find they'd already picked up the chains. Kids! In one ear and out the other.

It was a chilly afternoon and early in the second quarter, one of the shorts and T-shirt-clad little guys was clenching his legs together and informing me "I really have to pee." Unfortunately, we were on the far side of the field from the school. After a second plea to pee, I got the attention of the home team coach, who sent over one of his players to handle the sticks. The pee-er never did return. Maybe he fell into the urinal.
Later, the other little guy told me he had to leave. His mom was there to pick him up. I asked if he could at least wait until halftime, then inquired if his mother had noticed him on the stick crew.
"I don't think so," he replied. "I just saw her go into the school."
Sure enough, 30 seconds later, the school's intercom blared: "Will Joey Smith please report to the office."
What an indoctrination. All the things I had been warned about in that first clinic had materialized IN MY FIRST GAME!
REFEREE'S NIGHTMARE
Later that season, I did a JV game between Earl Marriott and St. Thomas More. Both sides wore black pants, with Marriott in dark green jerseys and STM in dark red. Anybody who suffers, like I do, from colour blindness, will commiserate.
Determining who was holding whom or locating that damn brown ball in a multi-player pileup was a nightmare.
To top it off, a face mask-tugging, fist-swinging fight broke out in the fourth quarter. Ah, memories. But do I break it up? Do I stand back and take numbers? They neglected to cover brawls in the clinic.
I survived that first year and was rewarded with some varsity game assignments this season, still as a linesman or line judge. My judgment and critically important mechanics, aided by hugely beneficial game-day evaluations by Barnes and BCFOA education director Tim Lederman, have improved to the point where I think I've gained a small level of grudging acceptance from stone-faced veteran Mike Westman, a legendary by-the-book, stickler-for-detail guy who abhors mistakes.
"As you get more experience, the game definitely slows down," says Barnes, who as a past president of the association was instrumental in improving clinics and education standards. "You're seeing the fouls, you stop ball watching. Most of our new officials are way ahead of where new officials used to be."
I still haven't had a perfect game. But I have secured a few playoff assignments this month.
The next step will be to become an umpire, back judge or even the guy we call 'The White Hat' -- the referee.
There is no process or real time-line, though, for moving up.
"It's all dependent on yourself," says Barnes. "It's all about reading the rule book over and over, understanding penalty enforcement, about learning how to conduct yourself, how to deal with coaches. You can be as good as you want to make yourself."
I don't know if I'll make white hat. I just know this: If that irritating, aggravating O'Connor, who's still a friend of mine, joins the association or shows up on a sideline as a coach, I've got no chance.
gkingston@vancouversun.com

By Gary Kingston, Vancouver Sun




Read more: How I became a whistle-toting zebra