Lance Burage, director of officials for Gay Bowl XIV, will be the head referee at this year’s tournament, being held next week in Philly.
A record 42 teams are registered to compete at the Edgley Fields in Fairmount Park.
Burage has been reffing flag football for the National Gay Flag Football League since 2008 and has officiated in every Gay Bowl since then.
Burage said he was too small to play football for his high-school team in Alabama but was always a huge fan of the sport.
He first started refereeing while living in Orlando.
“I really wanted to be involved in some way. Twelve years ago now I was in Orlando and I signed up for a certification class and started reffing some high-school football,” he said. “I’ve been doing it ever since.”
Burage noted some of the changes he has helped achieve at the NGFFL in regard to refereeing for the Gay Bowl.
“My first Gay Bowl was at Salt Lake in ’08,” Burage said. “We used mostly local refs from the YMCA or another flag-football league. One of my goals when I took over was to utilize our NGFFL member cities and recruit a permanent ref crew that goes to the Gay Bowl every year.”
The permanent crew is comprised of referees from all over the country, of all walks of life.
“This year we will have 37 refs. Everyone is from an NGFFL city. Some are retired, some didn’t make their team’s roster this year — all of them are fully invested in the game and the rules,” Burage said.
Over the years, a sense of community has developed among the group of referees off the field.
“The kind of camaraderie that’s formed — it’s like another team,” Burage said. “We go to ref dinners. We see each other at all those tournaments around the country. It is a reunion of sorts. We get to see everybody and have a great time. Some of us live close by and hang out. I’ve built some great friendships over the years.”
At the Gay Bowl this year, Burage, whose day job is as a radio programmer for 101.7 WBWL, a country radio station in Boston, will be responsible for coordinating the coaching personnel for every game of the tournament — a job with its own unique set of challenges, he said.
“I basically take all the refs, and we have two ref meetings before it starts. The first is for beginner refs. Then the second is for everybody and we go over rule changes, mechanics and watch and analyze film,” Burage said. “The big emphasis is on training and consistency. I also assign refs to all the games.”
There are three officials for each game: a head referee, a line judge and a back judge.
“I have to know which particular ref position my guys will fit best in. We’ll get the best results that way.”
For more info on Gay Bowl, visit www.gaybowl2014.com.