What would be a great freetime activity for an avid sports fan who knows and loves basketball? If you answered, “serve as a basketball referee,” then you are correct. Just ask Ty Huffer, vice president of sales for The United Group, Monroe, Louisiana. He is a NCAA Division I and II basketball referee.

Ty majored in sport sciences at Ohio University. In the late 1980s, while still in college, he got his refereeing license.

“One of the elective courses I chose was basketball refereeing,” says Ty. “Our final exam involved taking the actual statewide refereeing test. If you passed the exam, you received your license to referee high school basketball.”

As a college senior, he refereed a game in his hometown of Circleville, Ohio. A gentleman asked him if he had thought about refereeing college basketball, telling Ty he had a great presence on the floor and a good sense of the game.

“He encouraged me to go to referee camp to hone my skills, and that’s exactly what I did,” says Ty. 

After graduating from college, Ty relocated to Fort Lauderdale, Florida, for his first job and officiated his first college game — an NCAA Division II game — in Miami. A few years later, when he was just 29 years old, he refereed his first Division I game.
 
“Back then, I refereed twice a week and was paid $45 per game. It was the perfect way to keep in the game, stay in shape, and have extra beer money,” says Ty.

Today, Ty officiates about 25 games each year.

Being a basketball referee takes endurance; typically, a ref runs five miles during a game.

“At first, I used to run like a deer while refereeing,” says Ty. “A more senior basketball official gave me some advice early on. He said, ‘If you want to last in this business, you have to stay in shape and pace yourself. Every year, you get a year older. But the kids don’t get older. They’re still 19 and 20 years old.’ So I’ve kept that in mind, and I pace myself.”

Being in good shape paid off when Ty refereed the longest and the highest-scoring basketball game in the history of the Peach Belt Conference. It was a tournament game, and it went into five overtimes.

When Ty’s family attends a game, he makes it a point to see where they’re sitting. One game, they disappeared from their seats at halftime. During a timeout, Ty saw his wife waving from one of the top rows in the arena. After the game, Ty’s daughter, who was 15 at the time, said, “Daddy, we moved because the guy sitting next to us called you ‘stupid.’ I told him, ‘That’s my dad and you don’t know what the heck you’re talking about.’”

Ty, who doesn’t take these things personally, explained to his family, “People are not yelling at ‘Daddy.’ They’re yelling at the referee shirt.”

Words and actions can get ugly on or off the court, but Ty handles it calmly. His experience as a ref has even help him in his business profession.

“Being a referee has really helped me evolve in business and in my personal life,” says Ty. “You have to be a good communicator to officiate, especially because there are some coaches who think that refs see the game as an avocation, while for coaches, it is a vocation. Some think we don’t treat it as seriously as they do.”

Gretchen Roufs, an 20-year janitorial supply industry veteran, owns a marketing and public relations company in San Antonio. To suggest someone you think should be featured in “Freetime,” contact her at Gretchen@GretchenRoufs.com.




POSTED ON: 5/13/2015