No referees? No problem

When rain threatened to wash out Friday night football last week, Albany and Cross Plains coaches scrambled to reschedule. What started as a simple forecast adjustment quickly turned into a community effort—complete with makeshift referees, borrowed shirts, and a few laughs along the way.

On Wednesday morning, Albany head coach Denney Faith and Cross Plains coach Jared Sanderson agreed to move the varsity game to Thursday night and the junior high and JV games to Wednesday to beat the approaching storms. The only hitch: no officials were available for the Wednesday matchups.

That’s when Superintendent Daryl Stuard, standing beside Coach Faith during the scheduling call, decided to take matters into his own hands.

“I told him, ‘I bet I can get a little crew together,’” Stuard recalled. “We just wanted to make sure our kids got to play.”

Within hours, Stuard had recruited Matt Bellah, a familiar face on local basketball courts who’s officiated plenty of games, and Albany girls’ basketball coach Ashlyn Bevel, who had reffed basketball before but never football. The trio suited up with whistles, borrowed flags, and a few vintage referee shirts they managed to dig out of the gym’s storage closet.

Cross Plains was expected to send volunteers to help, but none showed. So, the impromptu Albany crew called all three games themselves. “We didn’t call everything we saw,” Stuard admitted with laugh, “or we’d still be out there.”

Stuard laughed about one small confession: “You don’t intentionally do it, but you kind of end up favoring the visiting team a little bit,” he said. “You just don’t want it to look like you’re showing favoritism with a local crew.”

When asked if officiating might become his new post-retirement career, Stuard didn’t hesitate. “Not a chance,” he said with a laugh. “I’m still sore.”