Rocky Slaymaker is getting to know the joys that his father, Ron, has been experiencing as a referee for years.
There’s the exhilaration of officiating basketball games, and the challenges of viewing the game from a completely different perspective than that of a fan, coach or player.
And, of course, there’s also the abuse you take. Even — maybe especially — from fans at junior varsity, freshman and junior-high games, the games Rocky is working in his rookie year as a zebra.
“Oh, you hear it,” Rocky said. “You definitely can hear things yelled at you. Not that you can concentrate on it, but just out of the corner of your ears. All I do is, I just giggle when I run down the court. ... But you do hear it. You hear a lot when you’re down here, a lot more than I ever thought you could hear.”
It’s safe to say the plusses are outweighing the minuses, though, both for Rocky and his dad. Ron, the former Emporia State player and coach and current commissioner of the Lyon County League, had been talking with his son about joining him as a ref ever since Rocky returned to Emporia six years ago from Burbank, Calif. Now, with Rocky officially a ref, the two get the chance to call games together; thus far, they’ve done a dozen junior high games as a two-man crew.
“That’s a joy,” Ron Slaymaker said. “I fell in love with this when I started doing it about 11 years ago, and so I enjoy every game, and however many nights in a row it may be, I still enjoy it. And to add your son to the element, why it just adds that much more to it.”
Ron Slaymaker, whose last year as coach at ESU was in 1998, jokes that he’s in his eleventh year of officiating “going on 50,” because of about 40 years in which he “reffed, but didn’t have a whistle” as a coach and player. He did also ref some JV and freshman games during his coaching career.
Refereeing was something Rocky always thought he’d want to do, and Ron prodded him for years about getting into the business. This year, Rocky said, his dad didn’t give him much choice. But of course, Rocky was willing.
“It’s another thing to do, but I plan everything else around it now,” he said. “I enjoy it and I hope to continue. My problem is not wanting or not wanting to do it, it’s the time factor. I own a business (the Granada Coffee Company) and I’ve got several things going on. (Otherwise), I probably would have done a lot more games this year. But what I’m doing has worked out really well.”
It took Rocky about five or six games to feel comfortable on the floor. During his first game, officiated with his dad, he had a lot of information to process about what was going on on the floor. He was registered as a ref after paying the registration fee and passing the open-book test, but he hadn’t yet gone to the officiating clinic his father helps run.
“I don’t think I blew my whistle until like third quarter, you know what I mean — (I was) looking, looking,” Rocky said.
On one inbounds play, the inbounder illegally ran the baseline, Ron correctly blew his whistle for traveling, and Rocky initially didn’t recognize the violation.
“It was pretty rough the first game, pretty rough,” Ron said. “But I’ve been very proud of him in that each game, he’s got better. And that’s what it’s all about. And the hard part of this whole thing is that the junior high games and the lower-level high school games, the freshman and JV games, those are the hardest games to do. Because so many unusual things happen, and the skill level isn’t quite as high, and there are more calls to make. So in some ways, the beginning people are starting at the highest level, and the harder you go, I think, the easier it gets.”
It should get easier still as long as Rocky has the experience of his own father to draw off of as his officiating career continues.
“I wish we could do more (games together),” Rocky said. “I’ve learned a lot. But I’ve also now worked with some other officials, and you learn off of each other. ... You learn their styles. I kind of know how he is, and he knows a little about me, but it’s somebody new, and when it works, it works.
“It’s a learning process. Every game, you learn something.”