Referees Get a Lot of Help, Huskies Get a Lot of Support

Students "help" the referees during the game and lead cheers nonstop.
Students "help" the referees during the game and lead cheers nonstop.

The referees assigned to the NCAA Division II Midwest Women’s Basketball Regional held on the Michigan Technological University campus are getting plenty of help from the stands. A group of students dressed in referee shirts has been leading cheers and “working with” the referees all through the tournament and the GLIAC tournament that preceded it.

“We ref high school ball and intramurals, and we thought, ‘We’ve got to do something to support the women,’” explains Steve Short, one of the "refs" in the stands. “They’re such a special team.”

He found a like-minded teammate, fellow football player Anthony Santi (Short is the Huskies’ quarterback), and the number of refs has grown from there. They even stayed on campus during spring break to support the team, leading the fans with their cheers and antics.

“They deserve our support,” Short says. “It’s great entertainment.”

And so are the student refs, who line up where the real refs would before the game, give the proper signals for infractions and occasionally give the NCAA refs some “guidance” over controversial calls.

“We don’t harass them too bad,” Short says. “We don’t want to be a distraction, so we don’t heckle too much over calls.”

Santi agrees that they get along with the NCAA officials.

“We hung out with them Friday night,” he said. “The head of the officials was there, too, and he gets a kick out of us.”

Of course, some of the student refs wear glasses to suggest some eyesight problems and do their stretches just like the real refs. And the NCAA refs now expect to see them.

“They’ll say, ‘We’ll take it from here.’ when we are at center court,” Short reports. And during the game, the NCAA officials are silent, but “they’ll give us a wink,” Santi adds. “When people say, ‘Refs can’t hear the crowd.’ I know that’s not true!”

Short says their attire and antics are different from the usual chest painting, and they’d love to continue to “help” the officials in St. Joseph, Missouri, if the Huskies advance to the Elite Eight.

“It’ll be tough with our schedules,” he says, “but people are talking . . . “

Michigan Technological University is a public research university founded in 1885 in Houghton, Michigan, and is home to more than 7,000 students from 55 countries around the world. Consistently ranked among the best universities in the country for return on investment, Michigan’s flagship technological university offers more than 120 undergraduate and graduate degree programs in science and technology, engineering, computing, forestry, business and economics, health professions, humanities, mathematics, social sciences, and the arts. The rural campus is situated just miles from Lake Superior in Michigan's Upper Peninsula, offering year-round opportunities for outdoor adventure.