The clock ticked down in the championship of the Intramural Sports 5 v. 5 fraternity men’s basketball league between Theta Chi and Tau Epsilon Phi (TEP) at the Southwest Recreation Center Feb. 29. Theta Chi was on its way to being crowned champion, up 54-45 with 30 seconds left.
But then, chaos ensued. The final 30 seconds of the game turned into a nightmare for the three officials on the court.
A member of TEP committed an intentional take foul on a player on Theta Chi, purposefully sending him to the free-throw line. However, shoving followed and the benches cleared.
“Some people were trying to [play] peacekeeper, some were adding to the fire,” Danny Kandell, the director of sports programs at RecSports said.
Then, TEP players got face-to-face with the referees, screaming about their displeasure about the lack of calls. RecSports advisers and students at the highest student-level positions were also getting bombarded with verbal abuse from unhappy players.
“Everyone was taking abuse from this team,” Kandell said.
The final 30 seconds were unable to be played out. Multiple students and players were ejected from the game and TEP was ultimately suspended for the rest of the school year from any intramural activities.
The incident is just one of many that RecSports officials have to face while officiating intramural sporting events. It lines up with a national theme where officials are starting to feel unsafe officiating games. From students getting into fights with each other during games to taking verbal abuse when missing a call, RecSports officials have to deal with it all.
“I don’t like the level we’re at right now with how we’re handling abusing the officials,” he said. “I think if we were at a level where we were disciplining these players at the level they should be getting disciplined at, I think we would end up having more meetings with how some of these players are acting.”
Kandell has been with UF since May 2023. An official outside of RecSports, he oversees the officials and scorekeepers for each sport and organizes their training and evaluations to become referees.
Multiple RecSports officials and supervisors said the fraternity championship game was one of the worst instances they have seen. However, ejections and berating of officials during intramural play may happen more than you think.
“Some of these ejections come from players versus players, just pushing each other, trying to fight each other,” he said. “But then there’s also others where its players yelling at officials or screaming at our staff.”
At RecSports, there’s a sporting behavior policy. If a team commits four sporting behavior penalties during the sport’s season, which include technical fouls, yellow cards or unsportsmanlike conduct, the team is no longer able to participate in the league, Kandell said.
Player-wise, if an athlete gets ejected from an event, they’re immediately suspended from all intramural sports, and the player will then have a reinstatement meeting where Kandell and his fellow coordinator, Trell Smith, will describe the severity of the punishment. It can range from immediate reinstatement to the suspension for the whole school year.
Thousands of UF students compete in intramurals. This semester, 6,589 students signed up to play intramurals and 1,500 teams were created, Kandell said. There are dozens of sports to choose from, including softball, flag football (7 v. 7 and 4 v. 4), basketball (5 v. 5 and 3 v. 3), tennis, pickleball, volleyball, dodgeball and indoor and outdoor soccer.
At the start of the semester, there were 115 total officials, but that number dropped to 101, the final official number count as the spring semester comes to a close. Per Kandell, many officials ref multiple sports but some stick to one. Additionally, there are 37 supervisers who are trained to officiate, according to Kandell, but are not included in the official count.
Specifically, there were 37 basketball, 62 soccer, 39 flag football, 34 softball and 34 dodgeball officials who worked games throughout the semester.
Officiating them was never easy.
According to Kandell, they can have up to three reinstatement meetings per week.
“I think it's getting caught up in the moment,” he said. “I think it's lack of understanding of being a referee, as well… Especially at the intramural level, some of these people are, you know, your peers. A lot of a lot of the times, none of these people recognize that the officials that are working intramurals are literally their classmates.”
Riddhi Banjeree, a master's student, has played intramurals at UF for three years. He’s mostly played intramural basketball but has also played flag football. He doesn’t expect much from the referees when preparing for a game.
“Usually, I’m not really too frustrated,” Banjeree said. “It’s like, I kind of go into the games expecting that a lot of the calls aren’t going to be right and there’s going to be things missed.”
When it comes to hiring, potential officials apply and usually go through a short interview. — if Kandell’s told a newcomer played sports growing up, is a fan of sports and had any sort of involvement in sports growing up, he will usually hire them, he said.
“As long as people are willing to learn, put in the effort to learn the officiating side of things for that sport, they usually turn out to be a good employee,” he said.
Kendall Rutledge is now a sports program assistant but has been officiating for five semesters. In charge of scheduling officials and holding supervisors accountable, she still hops in to officiate games.
Although she didn’t get interviewed to become an official back in 2022, Rutledge said after the interview process, they require them to attend a rules clinic, go through a field clinic and are put on a shadow shift before officiating their first game.
Additionally, she said there’s a sort of hierarchy when it comes to scheduling officials.
“Frat is automatically going to be our No. 1, we’re going to put our best officials there,” Rutledge said.
“Our frat games are a whole lot more than our women’s games. We can barely get girls to come out. If you have a sorority game, everything’s very slow-paced. And then you have something like a frat game, they’re chirping in your ear all the time.”
Rutledge’s most fond memory came in a Co-Rec softball game. She was behind home plate, and the pitcher came to attack a runner who came into home plate. According to Rutledge, the pitcher thought the slide was malicious, sparking the incident.
“I just stood back there scared for my life,” she said. “I wasn’t getting between them, and [I] just let it play out until his teammates eventually pulled them off.”
Nationally, referees and officials are starting to become difficult to find. Officials don’t want to deal with the abuse or the obsessive parents in youth leagues.
For example, a survey conducted by the National Federation of State High School Associations (NFHS) found that 50,000 individuals have stopped officiating since the 2018-2019 season.
Moreover, another survey in 2019 conducted by Officially Human, an organization that looks to promote the respectful treatment of officials, surveyed 19,000 officials and asked what would make them quit, and 60% responded with verbal abuse from parents and fans.
Yet, Kandell said he hasn’t seen a shortage at RecSports with officials yet. Although many RecSports officials have faced verbal abuse, sometimes on multiple occasions per week, Loren Nienajadlo has enjoyed his experience.
Nienajadlo, a 21-year-old sports program assistant like Rutledge, started with RecSports in the fall of 2022. He said he’s officiated multiple sports, including flag football, basketball and softball, but hasn’t faced as much verbal abuse.
A main reason is that he tries to interact and communicate with the athletes, complimenting them if they make a nice play. He relates to them.
“I treat them kind of like how I want to be treated, and I’m more of a social person in general,” Nienajadlo said. “So, I talk to them before the game, I talk to them during the game, after the game, just about all of this stuff and it makes me seem more human and they respect me.”
It’s also something Nienjadldo recommends to other officials starting out.
“Especially if they think it’ll get more intense game, I tell them to use their voice,” he said. “Give warnings. Say in football, there's a question about pass interference, just as you're walking back, if you have a second and there’s a player near you, just talk to them and tell them what you saw. And even if they don't agree with that, they'll usually respect that more because it shows more and that you can talk to them and just pose a better relationship.”
Freshman Logan Curtain started officiating in the fall. So far, he’s done almost every sport, including flag football, basketball, softball, outdoor and indoor soccer and volleyball.
He said he wanted a job at UF where he could be active. He enjoyed sports growing up and wanted to be involved in the game.
Just one year in, Curtain said he wants to pursue it at a higher level. He’s loved it.
“I’m even being kind of known as that one person where I’m honestly trying to pursue going up to high school and maybe even college, to the NFL and NBA. So doing this has helped me give an idea for a potential career path.”
Yet the problems are still evident. Whether it is between players or between a player and an official, Kandell said there would be more reinstatement meetings. One of the main reasons there aren’t is because the officials aren’t standing up for themselves. That’s something Kandell hopes to change.
“A lot of times with the newer officials, they don't know what to do if they do get yelled at by a participant,” he said. “And because of that, you know, that player doesn't get a penalty, or flag or a foul, whatever sport it may be. The more it happens, the more other players think, ‘Hey, that's okay. I can yell at the ref I can get away with it.’ So we're working on trying to find better ways to handle those situations.”
