From Shortage To Solution: Reimagining Education For Officials with Kyle Armstrong of RefReps

Ever tried to judge a play from six feet off the ground with bodies flying past and zero replays? That’s where referees live, and it’s nothing like the view from the stands. We sit down with RefReps CEO Kyle Armstrong to explore how first‑person video, multi‑angle breakdowns, and short, high‑impact modules are rebuilding the referee pipeline and reshaping sports culture from the ground up.

Kyle walks us through the origin story, the tech stack, and the classroom model that puts officiating into high schools and colleges. Students rotate between playing and reffing, then take those skills into local leagues for paid assignments. The result is a rare win‑win: more covered games, real income for teens, and a surge in life skills like conflict resolution, time management, and composure under pressure. We dig into the data too—confidence and intent to officiate hold above 80 percent across tens of thousands of learners—plus why brain science favors immersive reps over dry rule drills.

We also look at the culture problem. RefReps installs “Do You Have What It Takes To Make The Call?” kiosks at a state championship, and crowds only get 62 percent accuracy with only two choices and a ticking clock. That humbling moment sparks empathy without lectures, and it’s changing how coaches and parents behave on the sideline. From pricing and annual rule updates to VR experiments and partnerships with NFHS, this is a practical blueprint for strengthening youth sports, improving game management, and keeping officials in the game.

If you care about fair play, better coaching, and safer sidelines, hit follow, share this with a friend who loves sports, and leave a review to help more people see the game through the eyes of the officials.

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Transcript

Cold Open And Private Plane Story

SPEAKER_01 0:02

Hello and welcome to the Refsneed Love2 Podcast, a show that gives you a real raw and behind-the-scenes view of one of the hardest jobs in the pitch, the referee. I'm your host, David Gerson, a grassroots referee and certified mentor with over 11 years of experience and now over 1,400 matches under my belt. You can find me at refsneedlove2.com on Instagram, TikTok, and now YouTube. Today's guest is Kyle Armstrong, CEO of Ref Reps. He's a serial entrepreneur. Kyle leads the team at Ref Reps, fueled by a passion for building things that change the way people live and do business and officiate. Ref Reps was actually created to fix the massive shortage of officials that we have across all sports. It's a more effective way to grow that next generation. While not an official by trade, he has surrounded himself with smart, talented, and passionate individuals and enjoys working on cars for fun, not out of necessity. And fun fact, he once flew a plane from Columbus, Ohio to Indianapolis, Indiana with no prior aviation experience. Welcome to the show, Kyle. David, super excited to be here. Thanks for having me. Okay, so I would never ever think to fly a plane without any experience. I've never done it personally, although I think it's cool. How did this happen? Tell me the story.

From Fiery Player To First-Time Ref

SPEAKER_03 1:22

Well, I never thought to fly it personally either, but crazy story. We're just working on getting ref rips off the ground. This is in the very early stages of what we were building. And we've had a really long-term relationship with the Ohio High School Athletic Association. And we had a last-minute meeting that popped up over in Columbus. And so my business partner was like, How are we going to get over there? How can we we got stuff going on? It's busy. We're building something new and all these things. He goes, I got a buddy that's a pilot and he's got his own plane. Let me call him. And I'm like, Oh my gosh, like I'm gonna fly in a private gin. This is awesome. I think this is gonna be the coolest thing ever. And he talks to his buddy, everything works out. Yep, we're gonna take the private plane over to Columbus, Ohio. So we show up at the Indianapolis Executive Airport, and I sent you a couple pictures. It just was not a private gen. Like we're talking like a 1965, four-seater Cessna that came right out of the vintage era. Right. And so it was not what I was expecting, but it's still awesome. It was super cool. So we fly over to Columbus and we're coming back. Great meeting in Columbus. We take off, we get, I don't know how far, five miles away from Ohio State Airport. And he goes, Hey, can I grab the wheel for a second? I was sitting beside him up in the and like, yeah, sure, I'll grab the wheel for a second. And he kicks back and crosses his legs. He goes, All right, get us home. And I literally white knuckled it from five miles outside of Columbus to about three miles from Indianapolis Executive Airport. I was so tensed, it was crazy. I felt like I was up and down and all over the place, but it was a blast, it was super cool.

SPEAKER_01 3:07

I might have been able to do the same thing, but my wife would have killed me when I got home. Oh, yeah. Dumb in from a while. Yeah. Oh my gosh. If my wife ever found out that happened and I just decided to fly the plane for a while, she would kill me. That's it was it was one of those with the foot pedals, you know, there's no autopilot on this thing.

SPEAKER_03 3:23

You were flying a plane.

SPEAKER_01 3:24

Oh my gosh. Well, I'm glad you made it home in one piece. And I'm glad it was a great meeting. I mean, so I gotta ask you, man. You don't, you're not personally a referee or official or a judge yourself, but you are the CEO of a company that is seeking out to address the official shortage. So, what was the catalyst in your life that made you, you know, build a company or set up a company to address the official shortage here in the US in new sports?

SPEAKER_03 3:51

Yeah, so I'm from Indiana, born and raised Housier. I grew up every day just playing basketball out on the gravel driveway with redhead. And so I was a fiery redheaded basketball player, and I was not particularly pleasant to referees. I'll admit and went to college and just thought there's no chance I'm not gonna be the next Michael Jordan. Six feet tall, 150 pounds, like clearly I got greatness in my future. Got to college and realized, okay, yeah, it's a different game here. And very early on, I saw an ad for intramural basketball referee. And so it all clicked for me. Like, I mean, basketball player, I've coached a little bit. Referees, like they don't know what they're doing anyway. So, how hard could this possibly be? Like, this is gonna be the easiest job in human history. And so I went to three night classes and kind of soaked it all in. I've played, I've coached, I've done all the things, and the guy that I learned from was just brilliant. Like he knew how to teach basketball officiate. And fast forward till now, he's an NBA referee, and that's who I learned from. So I had every advantage good teaching, incredible personal learned from. I played, I've coached, I've seen it from all the angles. The first game I ever had as an intramural basketball official, D1 school, I had the football team and the baseball team playing intramural basketball, division one athletes, right?

SPEAKER_01 5:18

Oh my gosh.

Seeing Through The Official’s Eyes

SPEAKER_03 5:18

And so uh the first play, I'm in the lead, under the basket, I'm looking, uh watching the play, tight end of the football team comes barreling down the lane for a rebound, jumps up, grabs it, and he lands so far out of bounds. It's silly. And I'm looking right at like I'm walking on. Next thing I know, he's a half court on a fast break, and I'm like, dude was a mile out of bounds, and anybody blow the whistle. Uh I'm like, holy crap, I was supposed to blow the whistle, but I had never seen it. That was the moment I path it would take me to that, and it was like that moment for me, the fiery red-headed basketball player disappeared instantly because I saw it as a referee, and you can't understand it until you see it that way. Once you do, it changes everything.

SPEAKER_01 6:03

Yeah, it is so easy to make the call when you're sitting in the stands. It is so easy, so easy. Because you know, that you're sitting in the stands, they might, you know, recognize five things a game that they think should have been called. But as an official, like in a soccer match, the data is there's over 300 decisions you need to make in a match. Even in one sequence of play, there might be 10 different decisions of is that a foul? Is it not a foul? Is it a foul? Is it not a foul? Am I gonna play advantage? Oh, okay. Well, wait, now someone did something else. It's a constant, you know, thing where you've got to have this whole different level of thought that's so different from being a player on the the craziest thing to me is that part of it that people don't realize.

SPEAKER_03 6:49

Yeah, nothing happened there. We've also got to recognize that. And so this constant awareness, constant engagement and attentive.

SPEAKER_01 6:56

Yes.

SPEAKER_03 6:57

While moving your body, yeah, the skills that referees have are just off the people have no idea.

SPEAKER_01 7:02

Yeah. And noticed something on the website about the mission of ref reps. And I want to get into specifically what you guys do, but the mission of the company is to help the world see the game through the eyes of the officials. I think that's fascinating. And my channel, Refs Need Love Too, I think a lot of what I do is trying to help other people understand the thought process and decisions and the considerations. But what does that mean to you, helping the world see the game through the eyes of the officials?

SPEAKER_03 7:30

There's really two sides of it. One is literal. We will show you the game through the eyes of the officials. So with part of what we do, we teach the X's and O's, nuts and bolts of officiating rules, mechanics. But the other part of it goes back to where I was back in college. It didn't matter how much I thought I knew until you see it. You can't replicate it. Typically, you see the video, and that's the only way you can study from way up in the stands. There's a bunch of bodies, you can't see anything. We use that video. We will literally show you what it looks like. And so that's the other part of it. We'll teach you the X's and O's, but we give you an outlet to apply that knowledge through the perspective of the referees. The other side of it is the philosophical side, what we're talking about here. Again, once you see it from that perspective, you can't ever put that cat back in the bag. And so there are other things we're doing besides just our core business that's trying to help that mission come to life. We will show you it from their perspective and we will change your perception forever. It gets a whole lot harder.

How Ref Reps Captures POV And Teaches

SPEAKER_01 8:35

Yeah, no, I tell you, right now in the Premier League and in the MLS, they are starting to incorporate the ref cam. And I swear I would watch the entire match from that perspective. But man, it is so hard to read and looking through that ref cam. And it's again, it's so easy from a thousand feet up and seeing the whole field or having 20 different angles to be able to analyze a play. It's like, oh, it's clearly this. But from that one perspective, that one referee's eyes at six feet off the ground and with bodies moving at full speed, it is so, so unbelievably different. So I want to understand a little bit more about that first person POV. Are you gathering this from like high school games, youth games, professional games? Like, where are you guys going to be able to gather this official's POV? Because you cover a wide range of sports too. I mean, we haven't talked about this, but you know, obviously my focus is soccer, but it's basketball, it's field hockey, you know. I mean, it's it's football, it's it's it's all sorts of different things that you guys cover. How are you even gathering this first-person POV?

SPEAKER_03 9:38

It's such a crazy story, honestly. My passion originally, what I went to school for, was telecommunications, be the guy on Sports Center.

SPEAKER_01 9:46

Cool.

SPEAKER_03 9:46

I went and moved into a building with 800 other people who all wanted to be the guy on Sports Center. I'm all for competition. I'm not worried about that. The reality is, it's just like high school athletes, we know the percentages of people who are gonna get there. And so I'd always been entrepreneurial by nature. Uh I started out in a corporate job, moved up the ranks pretty quickly, but I was miserable. I just hated it. I couldn't do it, couldn't sit in an office at a desk all the time. And so it was that how can I combine all my passions? How can I combine sports, love sports, fell in love with referee, video, and video production? How can I do all that? And so, one element of the business is we have an absolutely incredible video production team, and we go all over the country and run video shoots where we kit up everybody. We have 4K cameras all over the stadium, we have point of view cameras on the officials, we have drones in the sky that are shooting video down. It looks like a FIFA video game or a Madden football game looking right down on it. So the whole point of it is that kind of back end of our product is we will show you the place from a perception of the referee, perspective of the referee. You get challenged to make a call, you actually start 50-50. So we give you two options to choose from. You make your call, we let you know whether you're right or wrong. But then what's really exciting is we have an expert official come on the screen, and in two and a half minutes or less, they explain that situation to you. What happened, what rule was applied, why was it applied? How can you be more prepared to make those calls again in the future? And it's think of a weatherman, right? Over top of it, yeah, with all the other camera angles. Perspective, you see the drone view, you see the camera angles, you see all that, and they just talk you through it. So it's like you've got a clinician or a coach right over your shoulder saying, Hey, well, if you would have been physician here, you would have been focused on these key areas. It identifies all that immediately to reinforce that learning process.

SPEAKER_01 11:40

Wow.

SPEAKER_03 11:41

That's that's so cool.

SPEAKER_01 11:42

I want to seriously, I'm spending my full-time job now, is pretty much, you know, as an educator for the referees in Southern California. I also generate educational content for referees everywhere. I just had someone ask me about getting mic'd up and they do some video, but it's nothing like what you're talking about. And I'm so interested in this. I mean, it's just gosh, it's so cool. I'm just really excited. So I gotta ask, what you're talking about like seems like the ideal scenario for someone to be able to learn, right? Because now instead of just like some theoretical conversation, like a multiple choice question, you're asking these random things like that, you're actually, you know, from the referees, POV on the field, but also you've got these other cameras as well. Is this a foul? You know, is it not a foul? What are your considerations? All that kind of stuff, and someone giving an answer. Are there any professional leagues at this point or any like high level? Obviously, we have college sports here in the US. Are there any leagues that are trying to do it the way you're doing this? Because this sounds really innovative.

Pipeline Problems And Grassroots Focus

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SPEAKER_03 12:44

It's really interesting. We've partnered up with some of the professional leagues who reach down to that grassroots level because they see it as well. I was talking to a college conference early in the days, very college conference, yeah, trying to get feedback. But we were talking about the shortage and is it affecting you? And this person told me at my level, we're always gonna have our 130 referees that we need to cover our games. We're always gonna have them. But they said 10 years ago, 15 years ago, I'd have three openings and I had 10,000 resumes that came in. And in the last five years, that went from 10,000 resumes to 5,000 resumes to 2,500 to 1,000 to 500. And so even at that level, yeah, they're gonna cover the three spots they need to cover, but are they covering it with the absolute correct, most talented person that could possibly be in that position? If we don't build the bottom, it'll never push people up and we can't get back to those days. And so we're not directly working with any of the professional leagues at their level, but they are seeing it and they're starting to invest in that lower level, which has been super exciting to see because they know it's delayed graphication, but 10 years from now, 15 years from now, those are those people they want to see come up. Where did you start? Oh, with reference. Perfect, good.

SPEAKER_01 14:25

Yeah, I think it's so fascinating. I mean, I know within our own country, my own sport, I should say, of soccer, if I can't claim some ownership there, like that's my thing. I'm in it. Almost all the educators I talk to are focused on developing the top 2% of referees. They're focused on, in my world, it would be regional, national, pro, and even the level below that's trying to go regional. All of the training content, all the opportunities seems to be developed there, not the other 97%. Yep. So it's a massive issue. You're getting a smaller and smaller pool going for those top spots. You really have to make sure you're developing that 80% in the middle. There's 10% of people who just they're not cut out to be referees, they're not interested, but there's another 80% who would love to do it if they felt supported, if they felt trained, if they felt engaged, mentored, part of a community, they definitely will. So help me understand a little bit about the education you're doing. So you're not specifically in talks and some conversations, some major conferences, professional sports, but primarily, where are you marketing ref reps right now? Who are your clients and not specifically, but the types of people that you guys are working with currently?

Bringing Officiating Into High Schools

SPEAKER_03 15:32

Well, we really can work with anyone across the board. We have local officials associations that we work with and use our materials. We have state high school associations, a lot of them that use our materials, but really our primary target is, believe it or not, high school and collegiate students. So as we really started to think about this and put this picture together, you know, you think about the infrastructure of officiating in our country, in the United States specifically, when it comes to training and education at the grassroots level, typically that falls on the back of the local officials associations in many cases. And so if you think about that, it's a hobby, a side gig, whatever you want to call it for the mass quantity of officials. And then they've been tasked with teaching, training, recruiting, holding accountable, testing, certifying any number of things they're supposed to do outside of the nine to five job that they've got to do to make ends meet and get by in life. And so now you love all that on their back. And we thought as I looked at this, I thought back to high school. I loved playing basketball, never in my life thought about being a referee. So no one ever suggested or even brought up to me that was a possibility. It's either I'm gonna be Michael Jordan or I'm gonna be a coach. Then I get to school, I hear about we'll be a referee. And I just kept thinking like there's so many kids like me that would love to be a referee if they just knew it was even possible. And so that's who we primarily work with. We go to schools, we thought there's a captive audience. So we built curriculum coursework support materials for schools to teach sports officiating as a class. So all over this country now, we just crossed yesterday a thousand high schools that are teaching our class, in addition to about 85 colleges, universities across the country, over 47,000 young people have taken our classes, had no idea they wanted to be referees, but they go to math, science. If I could have taken a sports officiating class in high school, no brainer, 100% would have done that. Because in our classes, again, going back to basketball, but you can directly apply it to soccer, 10 kids in that physical education class or playing basketball, and three are rotating in and out to referee the game. Yeah. And then you keep that cycle going. And what a fun, cool class for these kids to take.

SPEAKER_01 18:00

Yeah, I think it's fascinating. Again, I feel obviously after 11, I've played, I've coached now, and I've refereed for 11 years, and I feel really good about refereeing soccer. But I have to tell you, I'm volleyball curious. Like I'm like, there are a couple other sports. Like I looked on your website, you guys cover basketball, football, flag football. Flag football is another one that's like booming right now across this country. And I actually I got some work I want to do on flag football, baseball, softball, you name it. You know, even being a judge for um swimming. My wife is a gymnastics judge, and she's also a cheerleading judge as well. But I mean, what a cool thing to give people this exposure to all these different sports and all the little uh intricacies and rules about it. And then also this wonderful part-time job. Get kids in high school exposed to what it's like to be an official in these sports. You know, they're definitely going to be more inclined to do it, but then they've got this lifelong supplemental income that they can have, which is fantastic. Because I tell you, as we move forward in the next generation, I the numbers right now are astounding at how many people have a second job. Yeah. But that is the reality these days, as you know, inflation, your salary is not increasing as quickly as inflation, finding those second sources of income that are flexible or humongous. I think that's fascinating.

SPEAKER_03 19:19

And that gig economy is huge. I mean, this next generation has grown up with people going out and buying your groceries for you and bringing them to your house by clicking on an app, and someone shows up with their car and takes you where you need to go. Things the other thing that's super exciting about that, you know, we one of our best schools in the country is about 40 miles south of Boston. And they've been with us. This is their third year in a row with us. They were one of our pilot schools. And just in basketball, some statistics they've had over two, the first two years, 23 and 24 school years, they had 43 students go through our class. And what they did is they partnered up with their local rec and community leagues. And so these kids will go through the class, and as part of the course, they're required to work two games on the book or the clock in these basketballs. They actually get paid for it. Then once they do the book or the clock twice, if they want to keep doing that, they can, or they can graduate and be on the court and they can go work with a veteran official paired up with them for two school years. Those 43 kids in scoring and timing assignments and an on court officiating for two years made a hundred and six thousand dollars in game fees while they're still in school.

SPEAKER_01 20:36

Dude, that's amazing.

SPEAKER_02 20:37

Isn't it crazy?

SPEAKER_01 20:38

It's amazing. You got 46 or 47 students there? That forty-three students generating a hundred and six thousand dollars of game fees out of the game.

Life Skills And The Gig Opportunity

SPEAKER_03 20:49

Of game fees and covering all the youth community leagues where those kids, who knows, maybe they wouldn't even been able to play because you couldn't cover the games. Solves a practical problem, putting money in these kids' pockets so that David, think about the life skills you get from officiating conflict resolution, time management, all of those that's going to launch them forward in life.

SPEAKER_01 21:08

I think it's so outrageously powerful. I mean, as we move into this next session here, life skills, right? So there's the start the clock here, stop the clock here. But you're putting these people into environments where it's competitive, right? People management, all those things. There's conflict resolution, there's communication skills, there's professionalism, timeliness that you have to learn to be an official. I mean, you're preparing these kids to officiate a match, but you're also preparing these kids to have a life, potentially a career, a job, starting their own business. Exactly.

SPEAKER_03 21:42

And like one of the greatest things about officiating is you make your own schedule.

SPEAKER_01 21:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 21:46

So again, it's one of those things. As much as you put into it, you can get out of it. You can work one game a week. You can work 10 games a week. You really got to apply yourself to do it, but it can be done. And you learn those skills through this. I think one of the most exciting things, a lot of times you hear about this next generation, they don't want to work it, and that's so false. They want to find things that unlock their passions. I think that's one of the major differences. They don't want to work to survive, they want to work to thrive. They want to find their passions and plug them together. And I think that's another thing that we hear a lot from the students at our classes. One of the ancillary things that came with this, it goes back to my experience. The students who take our classes say, I have so much more empathy for the officials. I had no idea the job was so hard. I play the game more respectfully, our student athletes. But then I think it ties back into that. They're so much more aware. But what I don't think they're realizing, and it'll be delayed gratification for them, is what we're talking about here, these life skills. You get into a position where you have a bit of a conflict with a coworker, you learn to let it slide. You learn to address it with the coach, you learn to have respectful communication and explain clearly what happened and what you saw and why that's correct. Those are things, that conflict at work, that's nothing. If I can handle that coach, that parent, nothing.

SPEAKER_01 23:07

Yeah. I do want to come back to a couple more questions about the actual content itself because there's now a long history of people, the established players who have been teaching a certain way. Again, dry multiple choice tests, PowerPoints, things of that nature. You're coming in with this very highly technologically advanced 4K cameras, drone technology, first person POV. Are you getting people like skeptical? So that's not the right way to do it. This is how to do it. Is there pushback from the established certifying bodies? Or are people like, no, give me more? How are you making sure that you've got like the right effective content that's specialized for each sport?

Pushback, Brain Science, And Outcomes

SPEAKER_03 23:50

It's that is a super interesting question. When we first launched, from the established officiating industry, I'd say there was a ton of pushback. This is an online class happened. Yeah. There's so much brain science behind what we're doing, it's hard to explain all of that sometimes. There's a lot of pushback. Once people started to see it, it was like a tidal wave. Yep, okay, we're good. Let's do this, let's do this, let's do this. And it really came, I will say there are some forts in different pockets or regions around the country where we still have a lot of pushback. Other fields of industry figured this out a long time ago. This is not new. But why do surgeons practice on virtual patients? Why do pilots in flight simulators? This is all very common, but someone had to put it together in a package that would connect. And that's what we thought with these kids. They're on devices, yeah, short-form videos, micro learning interactions. That's the way that your brain and those neural pathways are going to reconnect and reform.

SPEAKER_02 24:53

Right.

SPEAKER_03 24:53

And so we can accelerate that learning curve once people see it, because we understand that our learners don't know what they don't know. But at the end of every course, we survey them. We ask them a bunch of confidence questions. How confident are you based on your learning experience with ref reps that you can apply your knowledge of the rules to make calls, that you understand your coverage areas, questions like that. Anecdotally, up from those surveys, we give them options strongly agree, disagree, strongly disagree. Across four sets of confidence questions like those, the strongly agrees and agrees are 95.3% and above. So they believe they can do it based on how they've learned with us. Yeah. Then we ask them, do you plan to, or I'm sorry, have you started officiating, or are you working through the process? Do you have to go get a license and you're still doing things your state requires, your local organization requires? So have you started or are you on the path to doing so? And when we first launched, we asked a lot of our partners, state high school associations, national governing bodies, what percent of our learners that actually finish this course and then pursue officiating would make an impact. Because we know, like especially at the high school, collegiate level, some of these kids they're just going to take a fun class. Totally fine.

SPEAKER_02 26:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 26:16

What percent though that actually pursue it would make a difference? They said across the board, 30 to 35 percent. If we could get to scale, you know, get people going through this class, and we could get 30 to 35 percent of them to convert, that would make a huge difference. The first time we ever ran data from that survey, we had about a thousand users. It was 88.7 percent said they had started or planned to pursue officiating. A thousand users, right? So I mean, still really good, strong data, a thousand users. We recently were at a big national conference, so I pulled data before that. We had about 47,000 users almost even on platform when I pulled that data. Thousand users later, it dropped. I've been waiting. That's gonna drop. Not everybody's gonna pursue officiating. It dropped all the way down to 84.3 percent. We have confident individuals that think they can do this, and we have excited individuals who want to do this. Think about that in the overall industry. How many times do you think about 47,000 people that are excited and confident wanting to pursue officiating?

Game Management And Simulated Scenarios

SPEAKER_01 27:29

Getting a high school aged individual excited to pursue anything that something aside from their friends or some other influencer tells them to do is like hard, you know, to actually have something that is going to be a job that they're excited about that, you know, is not necessarily easy, is really amazing. Or what is a catch and what is not a catch? That's a classic. Okay. So I know the technical rules. How about the game management side of it? Yeah, right. So you make a call or you don't make a call and there's conflict. Do any of your videos or any of the scenarios that you guys have captured, does it also address that difficult part of it, which is managing the players or the competitors on the pitch?

SPEAKER_03 28:12

Yeah. So we have a really incredible partnership with the NFHS, National Federation of High Schools, who writes all the rule books at the high school level. And so we recently, in partnership with them and the National Association of Sports Officials, a national officiating credentialing program. And this level one course that now exists for this credentialing program talks a lot about that. Game management. What is it? What is it and what does it mean to be a referee? Game management, conflict resolution. Touch on it very briefly, and it's intentional. Throughout our primary coursework that we've developed, we have so many learning activities, challenges for students to get out on the field court mat pitch where they can interact with their peers. So we'll draft them up a scenario that happened. How would you handle that as a coach? How would you handle that as a referee? The reality of it is specifically to that, we believe there's only so much you can talk about in a video. Right. Don't act like an idiot when you're coaching or a fan or a parent or a player, whatever it is. Don't act like an idiot. You're embarrassing yourself. I'm a redhead. Until you told me not to be an idiot, I never thought about being one. But as soon as you tell me, that's all I want to do because I'm a stubborn redhead, right? And so it's really about applying those scenarios to people. Again, that immersive learning. So get out, play a game in your PE class, and something's gonna blow up. But then we give you tools that you can use to now resolve that in the safe confines of your high school physical education class.

SPEAKER_01 29:45

Okay, just want to make a quick statement so I don't get hate mail. Refs need love too, does not specifically condone the stereotype that all redheads are like angry and out of control.

SPEAKER_00 29:55

I know there are very sweet redheads out there who have good emotional management skills. I just want to make that disclaimer real quick.

SPEAKER_01 30:03

But I think this is important though, so that there is going to be dissent. There is gonna be abuse. And so I do want to come back. I don't think I heard this exactly. Like, do you have any videos or training that specifically deal with these conflicts? Right. Like you're gonna have someone who's gonna come, hopefully not directly into your face, but come at you, a coach yelling at you from the side of the court, a coach yelling you from the side of on the football sideline. You know, obviously we've got, you know, in soccer, players coming up to us, whatnot, literally in the middle of the match or whatever that might be, whether it's the side of the mat and wrestling, but there's going to be these moments. Are any have any of the video you capture, this 4K video in this first person POV? Do you have you ever captured people like dissenting in some of these hard scenarios? Have you used that kind of thing in any of your training?

Changing Fan And Coach Behavior

SPEAKER_03 30:54

Yeah, we've definitely captured it, but no, we've never used that specifically for privacy reasons and those kind of things. But we absolutely do talk about it. I mean, we give them tools, we give them materials that they can apply in these types of scenarios. And then again, we try to work out those things so that when they're out in the learning environment, they can simulate these kinds of things with one another.

SPEAKER_01 31:18

Yeah. Have there been any leagues who have talked to you about maybe sharing some of this kind of purchasing a subscription specifically for their coaches or parents as opposed to referees, teaching coaches or parents not only the correct rules or laws of the game, but also some empathy for how hard it is to see through the referees POV. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 31:43

That's one of my passion product projects that I'm just so grateful we've we're now in the position to even dream this up. So we have two things we're working with on kind of a national scale right now. We have you, you know, you you go to fast food joint now a lot of times, and you walk in and they've got the kiosk that you just punch in your order. We have these kiosks that we've built out and developed, where state high school athletic associations primarily are taking their state finals tournaments. We have a display that we build out for them, and it says, Do you have what it takes to make the call?

SPEAKER_00 32:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 32:19

And it plays three plays from the perspective of the referee.

SPEAKER_00 32:23

Love it.

SPEAKER_03 32:24

Gives you two answer choices, and then we give you a little PSA at the end.

SPEAKER_00 32:27

Love it.

SPEAKER_03 32:28

The craziest thing about this, I just we just had them in T Stadium, Cowboys Stadium, this past weekend for their state football finals. Yeah. It's it was something like 683 calls were made over the duration of the tournament. The individuals who made those 683 calls were 62 percent accurate on their calls to get to 62 percent.

SPEAKER_00 32:53

So it's not like they have to make up the call out of nowhere or like five different questions. You're giving them like either one or two on the answer to think about that.

SPEAKER_02 33:01

When you're on the pitch and nothing's happening, you're constantly five going through the happen. Give you two options, you can only get to 62. That's right.

SPEAKER_03 33:10

Then the two options pop up. Imagine that on a basketball court, that on this page, below the whistle, and then you just stand there for almost four seconds before you report anything, would go crazy. The other thing we do, we have videos for the video boards, the jumbotrons, yeah, in the stadiums. Yeah, hey, football fans, hey soccer fans, do you have what it takes to make the call? We played three videos from the perspective, it counts down five, four, three, two, one, and we give them the answer. We've got some videos that people have taken in the stadiums and sent to us, and you'll hear the crowd deep eye, and then it goes the answer, and you hear the crowd go. And so again, it's trying to put them in the that perspective. Yes, we've got some organizations that we're working with where we're trying to put these videos in the hands of coaches all across the country now. So when they do their preseason meeting, there was just a study that came out of who released it. It was it's a very recent study. I can't cite the source, it's not coming to me. Uh, you Google it, you'll find a real but they ask parents how many of you believe that your kids are gonna go on to get a scholarship for college athletics. Yeah, with something like 62%, something like that. They said that they were going to move on to get a scholarship for college athletics. It's just completely unrealistic because the statistics show it's 7% with any sort of scholarship.

SPEAKER_01 34:28

Right.

Culture Shift And Respect For Officials

SPEAKER_03 34:29

And so what we're trying to do is take those same sort of jumpotron video board videos, and when you start your preseason meeting, all right, but in this meeting, I want you to watch this and make these calls because what will happen is the same thing that happens in the stadiums and arenas. Well, that was a travel, yeah. It was a call that you were completely unaware of, and everything changes for the grassroots mission and help the world see the game, really change that perspective perception. Because again, there's a lot of great organizations that are out there that are trying to get that message out. The treatment isn't that you can't talk to them like that. I am just such a believer that that's a tough thing to ingrain into people. Show them what they don't know. The data doesn't lie. You don't actually know as much as you thought you did because it's really hard.

SPEAKER_01 35:20

I've had numerous coaches, numerous parents, numerous players come up to me and tell me that their personal knowledge of the game has increased significantly, but their empathy for the referees has increased significantly and they've changed their behavior because they understand how difficult a job it is. And it's a human being who's trying to make that call in real time from one perspective on the pitch, and it changes the type of conversation that someone might have or question they may have, or they just might go on with the call and understand that they didn't see it the way I saw it. That is so critical for the future for a number of things. Those people might decide to become referees. Absolutely. And now they're like, okay, that person's not like a mean, evil person. It's another human being trying to do their best. I might be able to do that. I love the game too. That's a cool way to stay involved in the game after I'm done playing. Great, that's wonderful. You know, but again, it changes the culture. You change one person. Well, that one person on the sideline may have a conversation with the person sitting next to him. It's like, oh yeah, that's because of this, or yeah, I think it was because of this. And instead of them yelling both together at a referee, you know, emotions are contagious. If one person is calm and they understand, then they're gonna help the other person be calm and understand and empathetic and all those things. So it's you know, you know, capture the heart, mine will follow. And then it's like one person, then another person, all of a sudden you got a whole team, then all of a sudden you got a whole league, and then all of a sudden you got the culture of a culture. It's huge. It's what I always talk about.

SPEAKER_03 36:49

That these kids who have taken these classes, someday they're the coaches.

SPEAKER_01 36:52

That's right.

SPEAKER_03 36:53

When that parent who never took the classes, losing their mind, just you have tried this.

SPEAKER_01 36:58

Let me tell you a quick story. You may be able to help people with dating. Maybe there's a guy who goes to a bar later in life, whatnot, and he meets a girl who played field hockey. Oh, I did field hockey breath of league in high school.

SPEAKER_00 37:12

I know field hockey, I understand this. You can be helping people make love connections through matchmakers and didn't even know it.

SPEAKER_01 37:19

I'm telling you, man, it might be that little match that spark and starts a fire of love and kindling. It's an amazing thing, man. It needs to go onto the website. I think so. All right. So talk to me about the future for ref reps. Okay. So is there like VR in the future, AI? Like, what else is coming for you guys? You got the a 4K video, a couple different angles, you got first person BOV. What's the next set? The kiosk, by the way, is so cool. Love that. But what else are you guys working on?

SPEAKER_03 37:47

In the short term, really trying to enhance the mission there. We've got some things cooking with VR, trying to figure out how the market will react to that. We know the value and the brain science behind that for sure.

SPEAKER_00 37:58

Right, right.

Pricing, Access, And Annual Updates

SPEAKER_03 37:59

Um, are they interested in it as well? I think you touched on a little earlier as well. We're having some conversations with higher level leagues and organizations right now. They're starting to pick up on it, they're starting to see it. Yeah, how can we help them? How can we apply this to what they're doing? I think some of the things we've got going on with the NFHS trying to bring the digital age to things that are so necessary for the good of officiating, but technology hasn't kept up with it, things like the rule books, things and things like that. So we got a lot of things cooking in the background, but really trying to think about that next innovation. How can we really take what we know is good and what we know the science shows is going to help people in the future of officiating? And how can we really apply that to something that the market can bear that is accessible for them?

SPEAKER_01 38:52

Yeah. I think it's fantastic. I mean, as a young man, I took baseball coaching techniques of college. I just needed a couple more credits. I wish I would have taken this, and I think I would have jumped into officiating a lot earlier in my life. I did some rugby officiating in college. I was a rugby player and I got burnt out my last semester of school and was a ref, but man, I would have done so many other things coming out of college when I needed extra money and I was in a full-time sales job barely. Extra source of income and a way to meet friends and be a part of my community and stay active. Yeah. Gosh, I wish I wouldn't be able to do this.

SPEAKER_03 39:28

That's one last thing that's been super interesting for us as we gather data. Rugby player kind of got burnt out of the athlete side of it.

SPEAKER_02 39:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 39:36

We see so many of the students who are athletes who go through our classes and they say, I am a soccer player. Right. I don't know that I want to officiate soccer, but man, this lacrosse seems really intriguing. I want to try that. And it's because they're taking that class and they're going, hey, there's maybe some similarities here and some things, ways I can stay engaged. And so it really is starting to open horizons up for people. Yeah, I played basketball my whole life, but man, football. I maybe I wasn't built to be that athlete, but I could referee that.

SPEAKER_00 40:06

Well, I would tell you, I have no desire to be a baseball umpire, even though I played baseball.

SPEAKER_01 40:11

I don't want to be behind those that plate, like in the middle of the summer, you know, with the chest protector on and everyone standing behind me, questioning my balls and strikes calls. I've seen so many ridiculous videos. And as a basketball player as a kid, and I didn't play at very high level at all, a lot of rec stuff. But then as a coach, when my kids were playing, my gosh, those gyms are so tight and so loud. And the coaches and the spectators are right on top of you. I don't know if I can handle it. Volleyball, I keep coming back to it. It's fast paced, it's indoor. Only the captain, the player, can speak to the referee, not the coaches. I need to find myself like some prompt, like in a nice environment that pays well and everyone's nice. I need that.

SPEAKER_03 40:52

You're opening up the best kept secret in all officiating right now. Volleyball is where it's at.

SPEAKER_01 40:57

Dude, volleyball is so cool. It's so fast. Like in terms of the action, it's really cool. Again, I think it's a fun sport. You know, it's a nice environment. I like the environment and the culture as a rugby player. Like, man, gosh, I wish I was closer to that game where we had more rugby around us. The relationship between the referee and the rugby player and the coaching staff is so different from any other sport. There's so much more respect and dialogue and empathy for each other. I loved rugby for those reasons, is the culture around rugby. And I think volleyball, I know there's I'm just seeing some positive stuff. So let's kind of look forward here. Couple things, all right? First off, and I'm gonna ask about how people get involved with you and find you. But first off, you're you've got this company dedicated to the future of officiating. What is your long-term hope surrounding the culture around referees, youth high school sports? What are you trying to help create with ref reps? What do you see for the future?

Final Reflections And How To Get Involved

SPEAKER_03 41:53

Yeah, it's that mission of helping the world see the game through the eyes of the officials. If nothing else, we want people to understand them in a way that I believe and our team believes only comes from putting them in that situation. You tell me not to do something, I never wanted to do it until you told me I couldn't or shouldn't. And I think that's what's so different about this. When you show me it, just I think it's enlightening. I think it's truly enlightening. And that is the deepest part of what we want to accomplish. Because I think that officials are just so underrepresented from technology, giving them tools to help them succeed and be better from opportunity. Think how many, how much time coaches spend preparing and practicing. And then that's one thing that we talk about a lot. Like, how do you, as a soccer official, uh practice? You can't show up on the pitch one day and just it's a game, you're getting ready to go, and you say, Hey, coaches, don't mind us. Doesn't work that way. So the point of view video uh simulations are not being on the pitch. Man, when you see the speed of the game, you hear the sounds, it's a good simulation. So really it's that is the future of what we want to do. We want to unlock that mindset for people. This is hard. I understand it now. We have a really great, we've had so many uh news organizations pick up this story, and I'm just so grateful for that because what they do in most of those articles is so much less about us because what we're doing, yeah, maybe we're a conduit, but it's about what's happening. You hear these student athletes in these interviews talking about I play the game more respectfully now. And you know what they're not saying is now my teammates do too. Because I'm I'm not gonna let them play the game disrespectfully towards the officials anymore. And so that's the culture that's being created, and that's what's important to us.

SPEAKER_01 43:40

That's so cool. All right, I just thought of another critical question I have to ask you before I let you go, man. Pricing and like, is this only a B2B thing? Like you only work with school districts types of thing. You know, is it something that individuals can log on to ref reps? You know, how does someone go about purchasing the platform? And can you even give some direction as to what this might cost for a school or like for me, like at the Georgia Soccer Officials Association for my high school association? And yet, like how does that work? Is it like a per user? Is it like you get a bulk amount of licenses? How does this work?

SPEAKER_03 44:13

Yeah. So a couple of things that are really exciting about this, we're technically education technology.

SPEAKER_02 44:18

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 44:18

And so we talked a lot about kind of our marketplace in the high schools and colleges. You buy one seat license per user per sport in a school setting. So a lot of our high schools, they'll have 20 kids go through three sports in the fall, whatever three sports you want to, you need 60 seat licenses,$50 a piece to go through that. We have 16 different states right now that if you are someone, whether you're 18 years old or 80 years old, and you want to be an official for the first time, you go through our content as an e-learning course. You do a totally independent study at home on your own and you work your way through that. Um the Georgia Soccer officials want to get involved. That could be something that you do for all your referees as a refresher course, or maybe it's just a way to recruit new officials in. You get 10 C licenses from us, and the first 10 people that are coming through, you log them into here, you assign them the course, and they take off and start learning. That's super exciting. We really don't talk about it enough. Through our partnership with the NFHS, we update these courses every year when new rules, when new points of emphasis come out. We don't charge that end user or the organization ever again once you buy the initial seat license. These kids graduate high school, they go off to college, they get out of school, they realize how expensive life is, and they need that side gig. They can log right back into their ref reps account, and there's all the newest rules, newest points of emphasis. They or the school or the officials association have never paid another penny. They just log in, study up for the next year.

Host CTA And Closing Wish

SPEAKER_01 45:55

That's so cool. You're onto something that's so needed within our society. We love sports here, and sports in particular are becoming bigger. This generation that has grown up playing competitive youth sports, they're gonna want to continue playing in college, whether it's at murals and club sports. And then as they get out of college, people are having children a lot later and they're looking for other ways to stay active, to stay fit, to stay part of a community. So there's gonna be more and more opportunities for officials to, you know, find opportunities to work, to earn extra income, to stay part of a community. Maybe they don't want to play because they've got an issue with their knee or their ankle doesn't allow them to play as competitively anymore, but they can still be on that pitch or on that court or on that field or on that diamond, whatever it is. I think you're doing something that's giving us, you know, something that's necessary, but really is a wonderful gift. Have this conversation. Thank you so much for doing what you do. Thank you so much for this amazing organization. I can't wait to learn more and watch some videos myself. Just last before I let you go. How do people get in contact with you? If they're interested for their association, their school, or for themselves, how would people reach out to ref reps?

SPEAKER_03 47:00

Yep, just head on over to refreps.com, refreps.com. Right there at the top of the screen, there's two buttons. If you want to get involved as an organization or an individual learner, click there and that'll direct it right to our team. And I got to tell you, David, as well, thanks for everything you're doing, giving officials a voice, letting people tell their story, that is so important too, because it's humanizing them. There are people behind these stripes or these yellow jerseys. And I don't know how we got to this point that just because they wear a different color jersey than the athletes, somehow they're subjected to this treatment. And I just think it's so important for you to keep telling those stories and giving that voice.

SPEAKER_01 47:40

Yeah, thank you so much, Kyle. The Mutual Admiration Society here. For everyone out there, please check out Ref Reps. You know, whether it's for you personally, for your association, for your local school district, if you've got kids that are in, you know, high school, or you know, people connected to the local school board or you know, the local athletic director, this might be a wonderful program for them to connect with. I mean, I know my kids have taken all sorts of different education courses or gym type of courses over time. I think my kids would have absolutely loved this. I think it's so cool. You know, whatever they were doing, whether it was tennis or gymnastics or soccer or baseball or American football, I think this is a wonderful thing for everyone. So, again, quick reminder for everyone out there please support the refs needlove to online store. Guys, you've got a couple more weeks before the end of the year. Okay, tax deduction, okay, tax deductible expenses, being, you know, making purchases as a referee. Go back and listen to my whole podcast on uh again. I interviewed someone from the IRS who worked for the IRS for over 30 years, talking you through being an official and and managing tax deductions this time of year. So please go out, support the channel. And as always, I hope your next match is red card free.