Officials Appreciation Week Spotlight: Garrett Best
CHSAA’s Fall Officials Appreciation Week runs Sept. 25-30 and, in order to celebrate, we’re highlighting some of the outstanding officials who help enrich the lives of Colorado’s high school student-athletes.
Garrett Best is one such stand-out official, who has worked in the profession for 32 years, 21 of which he has worked with CHSAA for. Best has officiated at the NCAA level before and currently serves as CHSAA’s rules interpreter for field hockey. As rules interpreter, Best will setlle rules disputes between schools by clarifying the rulebook.
To offer your support and appreciation to Best, you can find him tonight at Regis Jesuit, or next week, during the National Fall Officials Appreciation Week, he will be at Mountain Vista on Monday, Denver East on Tuesday, Liberty on Wednesday, and Palmer Ridge on Thursday.
How long have you been an official for CHSAA?
21 years.
How long have you been an official overall?
32 years.
What other organizations have you officiated for, and when did you officiate for them?
USA Field Hockey: Club organizations in California, Colorado, Arizona, Texas, Nevada, Missouri, Illinois, Washington, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Ohio, Georgia, Florida, South Carolina, Maryland, Delaware, New York, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Virginia, and Vancouver, British Columbia, Winnipeg, Manitoba & Ottawa, Quebec in Canada. All from 1992 and on to today.
Why do you think officiating high school sports is important?
Without officials, it’s just a practice or a scrimmage. We need players to play, coaches to coach, parents to support their players, and officials to manage competitions. Officials are a required piece of the support structure to enhance the enjoyment and growing opportunities for young players.
What would you tell someone who wanted to try and start working as an official?
You must know the rules in order to successfully bend the rules to your favor. That’s how my coach convinced me to start umpiring when I was 12 years old. That’s what I told my sons and they now read the rules of hockey and practice officiating in our club programs. For adults, I tell them that we need them, and the players need them. For parents sitting on the sidelines, I encourage them – with a sly smile – to join “The evil empire of umpires”, “It’s not so bad because most of the time, you parents aren’t 100% sure what to yell at us about.” For players, I challenge them to ask themselves how they would like to give back to the sport they love, come coach, come umpire, continue to play and serve as a positive role model for young players. I coach, I play, I umpire, and I also work for a field hockey supply company for my wife. I tell young men, look at the ratio – it’s kind of in our favor. I met my wife playing against her when I was growing up.
What’s your favorite aspect of officiating high school sports?
This is how I give back to the sport that has shaped and continues to guide my life. I know that even as an official I can help make this game fun for players, win or lose. My game on Wednesday night went to overtime and we had a winning team and a losing team. After the game I called both sets of captains and coaches together for a quick huddle to thank the captains for implementing a requested change in how the players of both teams play to avoid a potentially dangerous and consistent foul. The captains for both teams thanked us officials and thanked the other captains and shook hands again. That was the highlight of the game/day for me, the high school players understood the gravity of their leadership roles and understood that they matter to the game.
Do you have a favorite memory from officiating high school sports?
Coach A and Coach B told their captains before the game, “This old guy was our umpire here when we were players.”
At a club event, I handed an umpire shirt, whistle, and a radio headset to a high school player and encouraged her to umpire. I told her I’d be right there in her ear helping her from across the pitch. She gave it a try for a game. Her parents were thrilled.
HS game in Oklahoma where my best friend and I were flown in to officiate for the weekend. During the 10-minute halftime, he and I picked up hockey sticks and a ball and gave a rules briefing with demonstrations to the parents of both teams, the parents applauded and thanked us for teaching them more about hockey in 10 minutes than they’d learned in the 3+ years of watching their daughters play the sport. The home team lost the game, after the game, the home team parents were politely arguing with each other about who was going to take us and where they were going to take us out for dinner so we could answer more of their questions, enjoy our company, and say thank you to us.
How does officiating at the NCAA level compare to officiating high school sports?
There are higher expectations and standards for officials to aspire to at the NCAA. NCAA coaches are fighting for their jobs each and every single game, they have a different level of pressure than HS coaches and that pressure can be put on the officials. NCAA Division I, we have video review at most of the schools we officiate at and it helps us apply the rules and manage the game to the best of our ability. The game is faster and is sometimes easier to call, advantage is sometimes easier to see. Conversely, officiating mistakes have more weight to them, and the games are almost always recorded, sometimes broadcast, and can be reviewed by coaches, peers, and our assignors. You don’t want to be that umpire to make the highlight reel after the weekend’s games. When I officiate a high school game and do a good job, I feel satisfied that I served the game and the players and did what I expected of myself. When I do a good job at an NCAA game, I watch my game later and try to find what I did wrong or what I could have done better, there’s always something to find. The perfect officiated game doesn’t exist, we strive to do the best we can and then move the bar higher.
What advice would you give to high school athletes who want to play at the collegiate level?
Find the schools that have your desired focus of study and a hockey team that you can play for and with, then send the coach and assistant coach an email expressing your desire to play for their team with a copy of your HS transcripts and grades. I tell the players that they can play for a D-III team, D-II team, or work really hard and apply for a DI team. I also tell them that there are collegiate club teams at a lot of colleges, and they don’t have to play for crazy intense coaches and have more fun. I tell them that they will have a family formed by their teammates when they play together for 4 years – a closer family than what they have in high school. I tell them that collegiate athletes have dedicated gyms or gym times, and they have special academic tutors, and trainers there to help them. Their coaches will help them be good athletes, teammates, and students.
What is it like being a CHSAA Rules Interpreter?
It’s like being a parent. I’m going to protect my umpires from bullying (coaches). I’m going to correct my umpires when they are consistently making a mistake or misapplying the rules. I must understand that the umpires are growing, and I must help them grow. No two umpires are the same and I can’t train two umpires the same way. I have to be understanding that the coaches’ highest priority is coaching their players to play as a team and win games. I know that their first priority isn’t understanding the rules – that’s my job. I need to be available to the coaches to catch their complaints, answer their questions, and patiently educate them of the rules and their misunderstanding. I need to know who to go to when I have questions, fortunately, I have excellent relationships with my umpire mentors, who happen to have high positions in the world hockey community. I have to take my own experiences with being mentored and receiving feedback after games during tournaments and turn that around to mentor my officials to help them go where they want to go in their umpire careers.
