The best seats in the house

Arguably the game of the event two weeks ago at the WIAA state football championships was the Division 2 thriller that saw Badger edge Waunakee 34-33 in a game that was decided on a failed two-point try in the final minute of regulation. 

Thousands watched the game at Camp Randall Stadium in Madison. Tens of thousands more watched the state-wide broadcast. None of them got to see the game in the up-close-and-personal way five men from Rhinelander did. 

An all-Rhinelander crew, led by referee Jeff Welk, officiated the contest. It’s a crew that includes current Rhinelander High School boys’ hockey and cross country coach M.J. Laggis, current RHS baseball coach Joe Waksmonski, along with Scott Spencer and  Steve Vandervest. 

“They’re all good games, but we probably had the most exciting game of the whole tournament. It was just back and forth, just two really good teams,” Welk told the River News.

The majority of the crew has been together for more than two decades, reffing games in the northern part of the state and had previously worked the D3 state title game back in 2016. Waksmonski, the greenhorn on the crew, started officiating back in 2016 and joined Welk’s crew full time a couple of years later. 

Another trip back to Camp Randall wasn’t guaranteed, but Welk said his crew found out it would be getting a state title game this year shortly after the third round of the five-week state tournament. 

“You obviously hope you do well enough to get invited back later down the road. We always thought we would get that chance, so it was nice to get that call,” Welk said.

Officiating a state championship game wasn’t the top priority when the crew first formed back in 2001. Welk described it as more of a way for a group of buddies to get together on a Friday night bonded by a common passion. 

“It actually ended up being a way we could get together on Friday nights, go ref a game, just have that camaraderie,” Welk said. “We’re all sports-minded guys, we’ve all coached and we all know each other. We take the game very serious, but we also have fun and work hard.”

Friday nights are often spent on the road, as the crew draws non-Rhinelander assignments in the Great Northern Conference, along with games from other area conferences, including the Valley Football Association and the Marawood. 

“That’s what makes it for us. We know we get to get in that truck, go down the road, laugh, talk about football, ref our game and laugh and talk some more on the way back,” Welk said.

It’s not uncommon to see Welk’s crew on the field on a Monday, Tuesday or Thursday afternoon during the fall in Rhinelander, reffing a JV or middle school game for the Hodags. It was the desire to help out at the subvarsity level that first got Waksmonski into officiating.

“My intentions in around 2016, 2017 were to just kind of officiate mid-week games in Rhinelander, help out (RHS activities director Brian) Paulson making sure there’s enough officials to have for middle school and JV football games,” he said. “From there, it just kind of mushroomed year-by-year from there, to going around and subbing on some varsity crews.”

The crew’s first experience at state was a solid game that saw Waukesha Catholic Memorial finish off an undefeated season with a 24-14 victory over Green Bay Notre Dame. Welk described officiating that game as “a blur,” while Laggis said the experience left him wanting to get back there someday. 

“Then that happened in 2016 and, to be honest, the experience was so much fun, we’re kind of like, ‘We’ve got to get back,’” he said. 

They were in for a treat when they did. WisSports.net’s Travis Wilson reported that the D2 game between Badger, located in Lake Geneva, and the Madison suburb of Waunakee set a state record for single-game ticket sales, at more than 8,200. That coupled with those who stuck around from the D3 state title game, won by Rice Lake, or who got their early for the D1 bout between Marquette and Franklin, made for a pretty large crowd inside Camp Randall.

“You kind of look around and you’re in an 80,000-seat stadium and it’s only a quarter full, but that’s still 20,000 to 25,000 people that are there to watch a football game that you’re a part of,” Waksmonski said. “I tell you what, the 20,000 to 25,000 people that were there, they still made that stadium quite loud to the point where you really can’t hear some of the auxiliary crew that’s talking to you.”

Prior to the game the crew met with WIAA associate director Tom Shafranski, who was Rhinelander’s AD from 1996-2000, along with the auxiliary officials who would assist in the contest. Waksmonski said that included Madison-area NFL official Mike Carr, who last week served as the down judge on the Carl Chaffers-led crew that officiated Green Bay’s 29-22 Thanksgiving Day win at Detroit. 

Waksmonski said Carr offered advice and the main objective was to let the players play. 

“They talked about that too in the pregame meeting, if you saw a foul, you could throw your flag, but if you thought you saw something and you’re not quite sure about it, they wanted you to kind of hang on to your flag,” Waksmonski said. “They really wanted you to only throw that flag if you absolutely saw that foul.”

For the most part, Welk’s crew did just that. There were only three accepted penalties in the contest, two of which were for illegal procedure. The third came as the result of something Welk’s crew had little experience with — instant replay — which is only used at state and on scoring plays, change of possession or to correct obvious errors. The replay proved to fall into the latter category as, after review, Badger quarterback JP Doyle was ruled to have been ahead of the line of scrimmage when he threw a third-down pass attempt in the second quarter. 

“That was a pretty cool experience to be able to go under the hood and look at it with our head guy, Jeff Welk, and reverse the call,” Laggis said. 

“That was interesting to go under the camera,” Welk added. “When you’re trying to make the call at full speed, and then you have that opportunity to go over there and literally see it frame-by-frame. We ended up getting it right with the help of the replay, and that’s what you want at the end of the day with those games.”

Though that drive ended in a Badger interception on the following play, it didn’t do much to affect the outcome of a back-and-forth battle. Badger rushed for 451 yards in the game and broke a 27-all tie on a Doyle 10-yard run with 2:19 remaining. 

Waunakee, with a spread attack, got a 215-yard and four-touchdown air effort from quarterback Vance Johnson. His 24-yard strike to Robert Booker II with 40 seconds remaining brought Waunakee within one, but Johnson missed on the 2-point pass attempt, Badger recovered the ensuing onside kick and was able to kneel out the clock for the victory.  

“Just two fantastic teams in Division 2,” Laggis said. “It can’t get any tighter than Waunakee scoring at the end and them going for 2 instead of kicking the try to tie it. Just a fantastic game.

“It’s an incredible experience and you drove away from that game thinking, ‘I’d just kill to work one more game there.’ It’s been a great run, and we’re giving something back to high school sports, and that’s a great feeling.”

Welk said he hopes his crew will stick together long enough to get one more crack at a state championship game, but is content if it’s the final time he sets foot on Camp Randall wearing black and white stripes. 

“If we are fortunate enough to be asked back, we would definitely love it but, then we also talked about that if this was the last time we’re going to be at Camp Randall, it was a really good game to end our opportunity to be at state. Either way, we’re grateful for the opportunities.”

Jeremy Mayo may be reached at [email protected].