Cherry Creek Athletic Director Looking for Final Four Return

Cherry Creek Athletic Director Looking for Final Four Return

As March Madness continues, sixteen teams vie for the chance to reach the prestigious Final Four. Fans nationwide watch with eager anticipation with hopes that their team can play for a national championship, or that their bracket remains intact for the office prize pool. These fans are unknowingly watching a second tournament where the Final Four is also the ultimate goal.

Every year, the nation’s top officials are selected to referee the Big Dance. As the number of games decreases, the 40 best officials move on to the second weekend of games. The referees that shine during the Sweet 16 and Elite Eight will showcase their talents in Houston. The top 10 officials in college basketball will make the calls during the Final Four. They are the Terrific Ten. Randy McCall wants to return to the Final Four for the fourth time in eight years.

One of the most respected referees this decade is Cherry Creek High School Athletic Director, Randy McCall. For three times in the past decade McCall has reached this elite level of officiating. Fans might have seen McCall during the MoreheadState vs. Richmond game last week at the PepsiCenter. Those fans who only notice bad calls probably did not.

According to the scorecard of Bill McCabe, the NCAA representative at the game charged with evaluating the officiating, McCall called a perfect game in the clash between the Spiders and the Eagles. McCabe praised McCall throughout the game as one of the Pac 10’s best refs. He showed the stat that McCall makes the right call nearly 87 percent of the time, ranking him among the best in the country.

“I think everyone, regardless of your craft, wants to be recognized as being good at what you do. To me that’s what it is,” McCall said. “It’s a recognition from whoever that may be that you’re pretty good at what you do and to me that’s fulfilling to walk off and feel like you’ve done your job well.”

The Bruins’ boss began officiating high school basketball games during his sophomore year of college at Northern Colorado. He had played basketball until college and wanted to stay around the sport. He attended officiating camps and learned that he enjoyed the art of refereeing.

The former football coach describes himself as a man who thrives on being around competition. He has lived his life around inter-scholastic athletics. McCall has officiated the last ten NCAA tournaments and he savors the competition among the referees.

“There’s a drive inside me that says I’m going to make sure that I don’t move from that spot,” McCall claimed. “At the end of this game I want them to think he’s good at what he does. It’s no different than a player or a coach.”

McCall and the other officials compete just like the players do for that coveted spot in the Final Four, or in this case the Terrific Ten. Those who don’t reach this elite level will have to retool and return next year.

“If I don’t referee the Final Four next week, I feel pretty good about my year. There are a lot of good referees and if you get a chance to move on you’re very fortunate. If you don’t move on, it’s not saying that you’re a bad referee or you had a bad year,” McCall said.

“It’s kind of like teams. There’s only one that finishes the year cutting the nets down, everyone else has to deal with disappointment and it doesn’t take away from what they did through the course of the entire season.”

The former Rangeview football coach and Northern Colorado grad made his first Final Four appearance in 2004 and was assigned to the top game of the year. He refereed the National Championship game between UConn and Georgia Tech.

“I was pretty comfortable with everything until I walked onto the floor 30 minutes before the game. You got 46,000 people there. It’s the who’s who of college coaches, it’s the who’s who of national media and you start thinking wow this is unbelievable,” McCall recalled.

“Then I started watching the kids warm up and I started looking at their faces. I look at the guys warming up and they are kids playing and I thought to myself, ‘We got a bunch of kids playing here. It’s a basketball game and it’s no different than any other game.”

The 50-year-old Colorado native began working college games in 1994 for the WAC and Big West conferences. He began working for the Pac-10 in 2004 and works Mountain West and Big Sky conference games. McCall officiates about 70 games each season and travels to 60 of them, a difficult task for a dedicated father with young children.

“That’s by far the worst part of it; being away from home, being on an airplane, being in a hotel,” McCall said.

Cherry Creek has won 64 championships in McCall’s tenure as athletic director. While he has pursued winning relentlessly, he also values his students’ educational opportunities and his own.

“My job is to go out there and perform the best I possible can. The only way I can do that is to try to consider everything that can help me be a little bit better,” McCall said. “As soon as I start thinking that I have this all figured out, that this is easy, that’s probably when I need to start thinking about getting out, because it’s ever changing. There are so many perspectives and there’s room to disagree.”

He has refereed Final Fours in 2005 and 2010. He was there when Connecticut cut down the nets in 2004. He got paid to witness buzzer beaters and tournament moments he will remember forever, but the best game McCall ever called was before he became a college official.

“My best memory refereeing was refereeing three high school basketball games with my dad. I look at myself and smile because there’s a lot of things about me that I’ve taken from my father,” McCall remembered. “His perspective on what refereeing was supposed to be is engraved into what I do. Refereeing with him, I remember doing that and thinking that was really cool.”

Like his dad, McCall became an athletic director and basketball referee. He, like his dad, also coached high school sports. His brother is an offensive coordinator at Northwestern. McCall brings his kids to his office to keep the love of sports in the McCall family.

McCall will referee one of the games this weekend. According to NCAA regulations he cannot disclose which game he will officiate or to which city he will travel. Since bad calls receive all the publicity, fans will probably not notice Randy McCall as he competes for another Final Four appearance.