No Refs

Our Fall sports teams have done exceptionally well this year. When so many teams do well, along with the other after-school events, it's hard to attend everything that you want to see and support so the administrators usually try to divide things up. Luckily this week, Mrs. Willis was able to come and watch tennis, which is something that I usually cover alone. Throughout the match, I was having to explain the rules and how the game works to her. Her boys are mostly football and track athletes, so she hasn't watched much tennis over the years. As I explained the game to her, she was impressed by the fact that there are no referees in high school tennis. The opponents call the game themselves. If your opponent says that your ball was out, it's out. If you think theirs is in, you play it. It's an honor system that is part of the game. You can question a call, but ultimately it's up to the opponent to do the right thing. Mrs. Willis thought this should be a blog post.

There are a lot of times in life when we want a referee. There should be someone to apply justice as we see it. Someone to make the call for us or someone to blame when we don't like the call. There are a few of those in life, but let's be honest, not many. More often in our personal and professional lives, we make a call on how to treat one another. We make decisions about equity and fairness. Sometimes the judgment calls of others that we interact with are questionable, but just like in tennis, we can't always change how someone else sees things. I wrote a couple of weeks back about trust and I think this is another example. We have to trust one another to make the right call in their dealings with us and in turn, we have to honor the system to make the right call with them, even if we don't like the outcome. It forces us to think about what is right and what is wrong instead of having someone to do that for us. And thinking about how we impact others is never a bad thing.