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Monday, December 1, 2008
View From The Sidelines
Raleigh Durham, NC
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Taunts, Tackles and a Sense of Fair Play Keep This Official in the Game
Tim Brayboy turned down a professional baseball contract to follow his heart, and along the way, he found his dream job.
Brayboy is a familiar figure on the Triangle sidelines. Football and basketball fans have spotted him decked out in black and white stripes, always in motion.
Brayboy transformed a lifelong love of sports into a career directing youth athletics and officiating at football and basketball games all over North Carolina.
Three-way segregation among the White, Black and Indian populations had a profound effect on athletics in Robeson County, where he was born and raised.
“In the Indian schools, there was no football, only basketball and baseball,” he said.
While Brayboy played both sports, he excelled in baseball. He was so good at it, he was named the Outstanding Athlete at Pembroke High School and in the Robeson County Indian High School Athletic Association.
Brayboy played baseball through a tour in the U.S. Marine Corps and afterwards at Pembroke State College.
Then he was confronted with a big crossroad that would shape the direction of the rest of his life.
An offer to play professional baseball with the Baltimore Orioles dove directly into the path of plans to get married and an offer to teach and coach at Canton Junior High School in western North Carolina.
“The Orioles offered me a $500 signing bonus, but I would have been sent to the minor leagues,” he said. “I knew my future chances were better if I started teaching.”
So he turned down a baseball career and started teaching in the mountains.
Later, homesick for Eastern North Carolina, he moved to Raleigh where he would work for the Department of Public Instruction as director of middle and junior high school athletics for the last quarter century of his 31-year career.
Brayboy loved that job. He enjoyed the staff development workshops he coordinated, relished a chance to develop lasting relationships with coaches, and cultivated his broad experience as a basketball and football official.
“It was such a fun job,” he said. “I had the best job in state government!”
As a college student in 1965, Brayboy had started officiating basketball and football games, calling hoops until 1993. He still officiates at football games, and after 43 years as an official at games all over the state, including high school championships and all star games, he cannot begin to count the number of match-ups he has called, let alone the number of miles he has racked up running up and down gymnasiums and football fields.
Physical fitness and stamina are important in the world of officiating.
“You have to move to be in a position to make a call,” Brayboy said. “Some officials become couch potatoes in the off-season, then they have to work to get back in shape. You really have to stay in shape all year round.”
Stamina also factors in the hazards on the field or the court.
“I’ve been knocked down, run over; it’s all part of the game,” Brayboy said. “One minute you’re concentrating on a particular play, and then all of a sudden you are surrounded and you go down. Hopefully you can get up and keep on going.”
From the mid-1950s through the mid-1970s, racial integration factored into match-ups around the state.
“That was the most difficult time of my experience,” he said. “Formal rivals were playing on the same team together, blacks and whites who had never played together or even against each other, and coaches who had never coached an interracial team.”
The athletes adjusted much better than the spectators, Brayboy remembered. Most of the hostility during those turbulent times came from the stands.
“I have seen it all,” he declared. “The best and the worst.”
It is a familiar taunt from fans who don’t like the way a play is called: “Munch munch munch. The ref’s out to lunch. Eat it ref eat it!”
“I ignore taunts from the stands. I try not to let them affect my ability to be partial,” Brayboy said. “Sure we make mistakes, but we learn from them and move on.”
Lest anyone thinks they can just walk out on the field and start calling plays, they had better think twice.
Officiating games is a serious business. The refs are well-trained, professional officials.
Clinics start six weeks before the various sports seasons begin. Officials must maintain a level of continuing education, and at the end of each season they undergo a rigorous performance review.
“The game is for the players. Not the coaches or the parents or the people in the stands,” Brayboy said. “For kids, it’s a learning experience. Less than one percent will play beyond high school, and we must allow them to have a fun, enjoyable experience.”
What has kept Brayboy in the game for more than 40 years?
“This is something I enjoy doing. I think I am contributing to something positive,” he said. “What I get back is self-respect, knowing I have the ability to do something like this. It’s not easy to be an official, but I love giving back to my community.”
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