Pictures are more perfect

I'm not a big fan of cliche's, but there are a few that carry quite a bit of truth with them. The one that is leading me to bring this up is, "a picture is worth a thousand words." Many of the photos I have taken for the paper have captured moments that words wouldn't give 100 percent justice to. However, this cliche has been especially true on several occasions when I have caught a frame or two that shows that a referee of one of the games I'm covering made an incorrect call or missed calling a foul or penalty that was flagrant.

I have noticed this to be especially true this year. In professional sports, they have instant replay and can double check that all of the appropriate calls have been made.

But in high school sports, all they have is the other referees to depend on.

Football seems to be the sport most frequently subjected to the questionable calls. That includes the interception Ian Lorang made for the Vikings in Friday's game that was ruled a "joint catch" with the tie going to the offense. I have a series of pictures that clearly show Lorang as being the only one with true possession of the ball. I have numerous pictures of Bigfork players getting face-masked throughout the season as well, most of which weren't caught by the referees.

It happens in all of the sports, though. In girls soccer there was a "goal" made by a visiting team that didn't actually make it into the goal.

Volleyball had multiple games that were stopped in order to sort out calls that were made by referees this season and one time the score was kept incorrectly for Bigfork.

While it is easy to point out all of the times that the calls were missed or incorrect against the Vikes and Vals, they certainly had a few inaccurate calls go in their favor as well.

The fact is that referees are human and they are all going to make mistakes just as everyone does in their job.

They each only have one set of eyes and they can only see what they see. It would be nice if they could review an instant replay and be sure they saw everything correctly, but that just isn't the case.

It is interesting, however, that professional referees are the ones with added review options, but high school refs, who usually take on the roll as a side job, have to rely on just their own skills. Of course the professional games have more riding on them than the high school competitions.

None-the-less, an incorrect or missed call at any level of play can cost a team the game.

It can provide an unfair advantage to one of the teams in the form of points, better position on the court or field and it can hurt or improve either teams psychological state.

Perhaps in these technologically advanced times, refs at high school games should be able to review video of plays that have questionable calls. Often times someone is filming the game anyway.

It makes since to me that if there is a resource like that available that it ought to be used.

Frankly it is a little frustrating to be in my shoes knowing that if given the chance I could show the refs where they have gone wrong.

But somehow I don't think they'd appreciate me tapping them on the shoulder mid-game to show them that yes, that kid was out of bounds or he did make the catch. So, I guess I will just have to settle for having a laugh about it to myself and those around me on the sidelines.