Growing up in Clintwood, Virginia during the seventies and eighties felt like living inside a postcard. Everyone knew everyone, the church bells marked the rhythm of the week, and high school sports were the town’s heartbeat. My childhood was full of hayfields that doubled as ballfields, porches crowded with family, and a community that never let a kid go hungry or feel alone.

But behind that picture-perfect backdrop, my brother and I watched our father and uncle slowly decline from neurological disease. As Dad’s health worsened, Mom cared for him around the clock while managing her own mother’s needs—and still found a way to give us a normal life. Dad passed away the day before my twenty-first birthday. Five weeks later, Mom was diagnosed with terminal ovarian cancer. She fought for a year before we lost her too.

At twenty-two, I stepped into adulthood holding a college degree in one hand and the responsibility of settling my mother’s estate in the other. Grief, paperwork, and uncertainty became my daily routine. I needed something—anything—that could anchor me.

I found it by accident.

In July of 1991, I saw a small notice in The Bristol Herald-Courier about a football officiating clinic in Abingdon. I went on a whim. What I found was structure, purpose, and—most importantly—people who took me in at exactly the right moment. Long time high school officials in my local area, like James Clasby, Terry Wells, B.K. Walker, and Bill Buckles became mentors, teachers, and eventually family.

My first assignment was a Monday night eighth-grade game in front of maybe 75 fans. I was nervous, clueless, and excited beyond belief. I don’t remember a single play, but I remember how I felt driving home: alive, hopeful, and—for the first time in a long time—looking forward to tomorrow.

Officiating became my lifeline. Game nights broke up the heaviness of my days. The routine of studying the rulebook, the camaraderie with other officials, and the challenge of getting better pulled me forward when everything else felt stuck.

Opportunities came slowly. I worked sub-varsity games night after night until I wondered whether I should give it up altogether. But Mr. Clasby wasn’t going to let that happen. He became both mentor and advocate, pushing for me to get varsity assignments and insisting that I belonged on the field on Friday nights under the lights.

With his mentoring, I eventually got there.

From that first varsity game—where I made what I still consider to be the worst call in high school football history—to playoff matchups, to a state championship on the turf at Liberty University, officiating gave me a second family and the opportunity to grow into myself.

What I remember most today isn’t the calls, the crowds, or the chaos. It’s the rides to and from stadiums. The laughter. The conversations about life, faith, money, work, and manhood. For a young guy without parents, those moments mattered more than any whistle I ever blew.

Long after I moved on to the ACC, some of those men still reached out before every game. They watched from afar and reminded me that they were proud of how far I’d come.

The truth is simple:
Without football officiating—and without those four men—I don’t know where I’d be.

Football officiating didn’t just give me a career.

It saved my life.