IHSA

Boys Track & Field Honorary Referees -- 2005-06

Four individuals who have been great friends to boys track and field and to the IHSA have been named Honorary Referees for 2006. Together they have a combined 117 years of service at the boys state meet.

Named Honorary Referees for 2006 are: Floyd Rogers of Crystal Lake, Loyd Grafford of Wood River, Ron Campbell of Skokie, and Angelo Rinchiuso of Decatur.

Floyd Rogers has been involved track and field for the past 50 years. As an athlete in Indiana, Floyd’s high school team won the cross country state championship in 1960. In college, he co-captained the Buena Vista College track team and won a conference championship in the half-mile in 1967.

Floyd’s first teaching and coaching position was at a junior high school in Carpentersville, Illinois. The school didn’t have a track team, so in the spring of his first year on the job, Floyd started one with no equipment and no budget. In 1976, Floyd accepted an assistant coaching position at Barrington High School. He coached the weight men and jumpers and remained there as a coach until 1987.

Floyd began his involvement at the Boys Track and Field State Meet in 1982. One of Barrington’s relay teams had qualified for state and Floyd accompanied them to Charleston. That year he got pulled out of the stands to help with timing and he has remained on or around the blue track ever since. For the first ten years, Floyd worked the north curve as a curve and exchange judge. He was eventually reassigned to the high jump where he has remained to this day.

Last fall, Floyd served the IHSA as an assistant referee at the Boys and Girls Cross Country State Meet in Peoria.

This will be his 24th year of working the state track and field meet.

Loyd Grafford was disappointed when he found out there were no coaching positions available at the school where he accepted his first teaching job in 1967. However, that initial letdown would not last long, as Loyd decided to do the next best thing and become an IHSA official. He started out by officiating football, basketball, baseball and track, eventually settling on just football and track.

Loyd worked his first state meet in 1975. He was initially assigned to the seeding staff, a position he stayed at for the next 22 years. During the past eight years, he has worked in the clerk’s tent and has been a finish line recorder.

In addition to the IHSA, Loyd has worked the Prairie State Games for the last 6 years as both a meet manager and starter. Loyd has never looked at officiating as a job but has always seen it as a “fun thing to do.”

This will be Loyd’s 31st state meet.

Ron Campbell has been working the triple jump since it was reintroduced at the state meet in 1974. During his tenure he served as the head triple jump judge for 20 years. Ron has also worked the Girls State Meet for the past eight years.

Ron jumped around between a few high schools for the first four years of his teaching and coaching career before settling at Niles West. He remained at West for the next 34 years. Since his retirement in 1998, Ron has spent time as both a track and field official and volunteer coach at West.

Ron received an ITCCCA official’s award in 2001 and says his dream vacation would consist of spending a week working two sessions a day at the World Championships or the Olympics.

This will be Ron’s 33rd year or working the state meet.

Angelo Rinchiuso has worn many hats during his run of volunteering at the IHSA Boys Track and Field State Meet. He has served as a curve judge, discus official, pole vault official, shot put official and clerk of the course since his first meet in 1977.

Angelo ran track and cross country at Illinois State University during the late 1960s. After graduation, he taught at Downers Grove South for a year before accepting a job as a teacher and head cross country and track coach at Quincy Senior High School.

In 1994, he accepted a job as athletic director at Eisenhower High School in Decatur. He worked as the A.D. for four years but decided to return to the classroom and coaching after his stint in administration. In that year, Angelo was hired as an assistant cross country and track coach at Millikin University where he stayed until he retired from teaching and coaching in 2004.

Angelo has been a President and Facilities Coordinator for the ITCCCA and has worked numerous NCAA and USATF junior meets in addition to his service to the IHSA.

This past spring he returned to coaching when he accepted a position as an assistant track and field coach at Mt. Zion High School. This weekend he will be working as a shot put official at the state meet.

This is Angelo’s 29th state meet.