Tom Keating

The featured speaker at Monday’s Rotary Club of Jefferson meeting was Tom Keating, the Executive Director of the Iowa High School Athletic Association. Keating joined the IHSAA in 2019 after long and successful careers as a teacher/coach at Dubuque Wahlert, and an administrator at Cedar Rapids Xavier. His Wahlert volleyball teams won 11 State Championships, and he garnered nearly every state and national coaching award made available.

Keating told Raccoon Valley Radio there is a great need for game officials in all sports on the middle school and high school levels. A generation of officials, mainly older, are retiring, and the numbers of newer officials aren’t equaling the numbers getting out. “We’ve really reached out to promote the profession of officiating. We’ve got a great program right now with Ref Reps that a lot of our high schools are taking advantage of that provides curriculum for high school students to become certified officials. We’re seeing some great response and the folks at Ref Reps tell us Iowa is now the number one state in terms of taking advantage of this. We’re cautiously optimistic that we’ll get some young people involved in officiating.”

He added that when we the public see younger officials, we are asked to “show them some love” and not be critical as they learn how to be proficient as an official.