Nick King photo

Former Big Eight and Big 12 basketball official Ron Zetcher, center, jokes with Show-Me State Games officials Tony Bickford, left, and Jonathan Thurston yesterday at the MU Student Recreation Center. Zetcher is the Games’ coordinator of basketball officials.

Just like those who play the games, Ron Zetcher said there’s only one way to become a better basketball official.

"The more plays you see, the better you become," said Zetcher, during the second of three weekends in which he serves as the coordinator of basketball officials for the Show-Me State Games. "It’s just like anything else. If you’re a shortstop and your coach hits you 150 ground balls a day, you’re going to get better, aren’t you?"

That’s why Zetcher, a longtime Big Eight and Big 12 referee who has worked 17 NCAA Tournaments and 20 NITs and now supervises basketball officials for the Mid-America Intercollegiate Athletics Association, brings MIAA officials to the MU Student Recreation Center every summer to sharpen their skills.

It’s a system that Zetcher and former director of the Show-Me State Games Gary Filbert worked out years ago, and one that continues to work well for both sides.

Zetcher’s referees get the experience they need to become good officials for an NCAA Division II league. And the basketball competition at the Show-Me State Games gets a level of legitimacy that Zetcher said only a staff of quality officials can bring.

"You don’t want to travel halfway across the state of Missouri with seven, eight, nine kids and have someone who doesn’t know what the hell they’re doing officiating your game, no matter what sport it is," Zetcher said. "They want to know that when their kids go out and play, there are pretty competent guys that are going to officiate the game the right way."

Joe Guffey, who is in his second year as the SMSG commissioner of basketball, said the officiating has been "solid."

"I don’t think referees ever get enough work. They should always be working," Guffey said. "So this is good for the refs and good for the Show-Me State Games."

As supervisor of officials for the MIAA, Zetcher runs several camps every summer for current and prospective referees. While not an official camp, the Show-Me State Games is a lot like those. This weekend, there were 80 officials at the recreation center. Next weekend, he expects more than 100. And almost all of them are trying to break into the exclusive club that is basketball officiating.

"It gives me an idea of which officials are willing to go the extra mile," he said. "Because, let’s face it, there’s a lot of things you’d rather be doing than coming down here and refereeing on a weekend in July."

In the life of a basketball referee, Zetcher said, the advancement of a career has almost as much to do with who you know as how good you are and how hard you work. That’s how his career got started. After umpiring high school baseball games in the 1960s, he started officiating high school basketball games in 1968 and worked the MSHSAA basketball tournament for the first time in 1975.

After three years of working the state tournament, Zetcher got help from Jack Miles, who then was MSHSAA’s executive director. Miles used his connections to get Zetcher a job officiating in the Big Eight, and in 1981, he worked his first NCAA Tournament.

Zetcher had an on-court view of one of Missouri’s most notable games. Tyus Edney went the length of the floor in 4.8 seconds to help eventual national champion UCLA beat the Tigers 75-74 in the second round of the 1995 NCAA Tournament in Boise, Idaho.

"The thing you don’t want to do is you don’t want to factor in the outcome of that game, because that was a great game," he said. "That wasn’t just a regular Tuesday night game at the high school gym."

The reputation and presence of Zetcher is part of the reason why Todd Miller was working the Show-Me State Games this weekend. A Jefferson City attorney by day, Miller has officiated games in the Great Rivers Athletic Conference and has an invitation to work games in the NAIA’s Heart of America Athletic Conference this season. He hopes to move up to the MIAA soon.

"I would say the majority of the officials that have come out of Missouri and had any sort of success, Ron Zetcher had something to do with it," Miller said. The MIAA "is not one of the premier conferences in the country, but you can learn so much from him."

In February, Zetcher became just the 10th official inducted into the Missouri Sports Hall of Fame. In a class that included former Missouri baseball Coach Gene McArtor, St. Louis Cardinals General Manager Walt Jocketty and baseball hall of famer Bruce Sutter, it was "an unbelievable experience."

"There are so many officials that preceded me who were tremendous officials and they aren’t in there," said the 67 year-old, who now lives in O’Fallon. "You’re humbled."

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