Referee makes all the calls from wheelchair

Even if they don’t acknowledge it, basketball referees do hear coaches barking at them from the bench or players protesting a foul or fans booing a call that goes against their team.

Steve Doudt certainly hears it. The difference is that he doesn’t just tolerate it, he relishes it. It means he’s being treated like any other referee, which is high praise to someone who blows his whistle from the seat of a wheelchair.

“I want to be looked at like any other person wearing stripes. I just get up and down the floor differently,” Doudt said. “Make the call, miss the call, whatever. I want ‘em to do that. I don’t want anybody thinking, ‘Let’s cut him a break.’ “

Life cut Doudt a horrific break in 1992 in Fort Bragg, N.C., when a car sent his motorcycle into a guardrail and him flying. He left the hospital five months later without the use of his legs and his career as an Air Force commando over.

Instead of worrying about what he couldn’t do, Doudt set about finding out what he could do. Fourteen years later, at age 37, he has found out there isn’t much he can’t do, including officiate basketball games.

He began by officiating games in the National Wheelchair Basketball Association, a league in which he played for 10 years until it began taking too much time away from his wife, Sherri, and their three children.

Doudt got his state official’s license by passing the mandatory written test. He didn’t think about doing “stand-up games,” as he calls them, until John Quick, athletic director at Creston Middle School in Warren Township, Ind., where Sherri teaches eighth grade, called him on her recommendation.

Doudt has worked mainly middle school games and a few high school girls junior varsity games. He views it as a hobby, but he can be as busy with it as he wants. Pay is about $60 per game.

“I’ve had nothing but positive reaction to the job he does,” Quick said. “His reputation is that he goes by the book and he’s all business out on the court.” Doudt’s only limitation is a lack of lateral movement, which requires him to have a keen sense of anticipation. “I’m in the positions I need to be in,” he said. “I just take a little different route getting there.”

Doudt acknowledges high school boys varsity games might be too fast for him, and he has no plans in that direction. But he doesn’t rule it out, and the Indiana High School Athletic Association has no rules that would prevent him from trying.

“We wouldn’t have any problem going to see him in action,” said Theresia Wynns, IHSAA assistant commissioner in charge of officials. “The main thing is, we want him to be safe and the players to be safe.”