(This story first published on cmumavericks.com)
Melaina Howard can’t imagine the feeling athletes would get if they showed up to a swim meet, only to have it canceled because there aren’t enough officials to run the event.
The daughter of a swim official, Howard knew one day she’d follow in her father’s footsteps, walking up and down the deck as a stroke judge, making sure turns are done properly, or maybe as the chief judge in charge of the whole crew.
A sophomore distance freestyle swimmer at Colorado Mesa, Howard moved up her officiating timeline a bit to the point where, if she’s not entered in a meet for the Mavericks, she’s helping officiate either a high school or a USA Swimming club meet.
“Growing up, my dad was an official, and I wanted to become an official anyway when I was done swimming, because as an athlete, you go to these meets and some can’t run because enough officials don’t show up,” she said. “That was kind of my plan anyway. Then I got injured and I wasn’t in the pool a lot and one of the officials that I’m friends with was like, hey, you should became an official.”
At the time, she was helping officiate Special Olympics swim meets, so she started checking to see what all it would take to become a certified with USA Swimming.
“Now it’s one of those things, my dad retired and I just kind of took over, but in a different state,” said Howard, who is from Austin, Texas.
Growing up, Howard helped volunteer with Special Olympics as a swim coach. She’s thinking about a career teaching at a school for the deaf, or possibly becoming a school or athletic administrator.
“In high school I took three years of American Sign Language and I’ve coached multiple kids that were deaf,” she said. “It’s one of those things I’ve had experience with and I would be able to help them a lot more since I know how to communicate with them. The first year I (helped with Special Olympics) I was about 13 and I had been running a summer league (swim) team with one of my coaches and his kid was deaf and was going to be competing in Special Olympics. He asked me to coach his kid, so I became one of the coaches for the team and I just kept coming back.”
When she arrived in Grand Junction, it was a couple of weeks before the Colorado Special Olympics Summer Games, held on CMU’s campus. Swim coach Mickey Wender mentioned to the Mavs that volunteers are always needed. She and several teammates signed on — still others were coaching the Special Olympians.
“I showed up to just be any helping hand and they were like, OK, you’re going to be an official,” she said. “That was the first time I was thrown into that world. I was partially a lifeguard at that meet, but that was a great experience because I was able to still run the meet, just in a different way.”
She’s certified as a stroke and turn judge and just completed her certification as a starter. Her next step is to become a certified chief judge. Each requires taking a course, passing a test and shadowing an official for a number of sessions in two separate meets.
“I kind of like to do everything,” she said. “I probably prefer stroke and turn, it’s a lot more interactive, but I’ve done (chief judging) a couple of times and I also enjoy doing that. You kind of get to be the head of certain aspects of the meet, which I find fun.”
Some of the high school rules are different than USA Swimming rules, but she said it’s an easy transition, and she’s been a last-minute addition to an officiating crew for prep meets.
There’s a lot more that goes into being a swim official than showing up and watching to make sure no one has an illegal stroke or turn. The officials meet the day before a multi-day event and go over assignments, the meet schedule, and, if there are enough officials, when they will be relieved so they can get off their feet for awhile.
“You can probably get by with six, but that would mean nobody gets a break, nobody gets relief and you’re just kind of standing on your feet all day,” she said of how many officials it takes to properly work a large meet. “It’s a lot easier if you have close to 12, especially for some of these like short course and long course, you can have walkers, because you can only really see so much from the side. When you have walkers, you have people on either side of the pool walking along the swimmers so they can’t cheat during the middle of the pool, and it runs a lot smoother with more officials.”
OK, that begs the question: How can a swimmer cheat?
“The breaststroke, you can sneak in a few flutter kicks, just because you’re straight up and you can’t see it because of the glare in the pool and you’re in the middle and nobody can see,” she said.
One thing Howard learned early on is that no matter what the athletes might think, the officials aren’t out to disqualify swimmers.
“A lot of athletes are like, ‘Oh, they’re just out to disqualify you,’ ” she said. “A big rule with officiating is, you’re giving the athlete the benefit of the doubt. If you’re even second-guessing what you saw, you do not call it. You just don’t do it. They’re not out to just, ‘Oh, we’re going to DQ kids for fun.’ ”
She’s had to call some infractions, including one, she said, that she waited on to make sure she saw what she thought she saw on backstroke turn. Learning how to judge strokes and turns has helped her own swimming, reinforcing the proper way to hit the wall on a turn, because she knows what the officials are watching.
“The other day I had a call where a girl flipped over and did her backstroke stroke, and then she took another stroke,” Howard said of when she was judging backstroke turns. “I was like, did I see that right? Then I was thinking about how I do a backstroke turn and debating if I’m even doing it right. Then she did it again and I was like, OK, no, that’s not right, so I was able to call it the second time.”
She’s had to deal with one upset coach — “but that’s because I DQ’d their own child, so they were kind of mad about that” — but by and large, the coaches, athletes and officials work together to help the swimmers compete.
Becoming a swim official might not be all that attractive when you’re also competing at the collegiate level, Howard said, but teammate Lucas Motley, a sophomore from Montrose, is a certified high school official.
“These will be three-, four-day meets and we’re practicing in between the sessions, or before the session even starts,” she said, “so I know a lot of kids probably don’t want to practice for two hours and then immediately go work a meet for the next seven hours.”
The officiating community is an extension of her swimming family.
“It’s great. We’re all there for each other at all times. If you ever need help with something, the entire team is there for you,” Howard said of CMU’s large, successful swimming and diving team. “We go out and volunteer a lot, we help out in the community, we’ve worked football games, we just worked at a greenhouse for a couple weeks. We’re just there to help each other. A lot of the kids on the team are coaches so they’re giving back to the younger kids and we’re having more and more people that want to coach and we have the current coaches that are willing to help them.”
She enjoys seeing the different view of the pool as an official, and she’s making connections through swimming that could help her after she graduates.
“You are in such a great community of people, once you start becoming friends with them, that you know they will be able to help you going on in life,” Howard said. “I’m friends with an engineer and multiple people that are in the teaching profession, and I’m like, you could help me get a job later on. I’m surrounded by such great people that I don’t have any regrets about joining it, because I find it fun, and the people that I’m surrounded by also make it fun, because you’re meeting people from all over the state that I probably never would have met if I didn’t start officiating.”
And who knows, one day she might get a shot at the ultimate event, officiating in the Olympic Games.
“I would like to work the Olympics if I could. I think I got an early enough start that they’re like, oh, you have 30 years of experience by the time you’re 50,” she said. “I would like to be a deck ref; if I could be able to go to the Olympics, it would be a dream of mine.
“But you know, that’s a long ways away before I could ever get to that point.”