Kermit Quisenberry, 39, of Louisville will be one of six US referees officiating at the men's and women's soccer tournaments, which start today (Wednesday) ahead of Friday's opening ceremony.
Along with his referee team of Jair Maruffo and George Gansner, Kermit’s first assignment is the Group D match between Cameroon and Korea at Qinhuangdao on Thursday.
Kermit Quisenberry (far right) is pictured with Jason Cullum, Jason Anno and Jozsef Batko at a Major League Soccer game in Houston.
Now employed at Taylor Middle High School in Pierson, Florida, Kermit was directing students out of the parking lot on April 17 when he received a call from Paul Tamberino, national director of referees.
"He told me that I had been selected and that I was one of the six officials going to the Olympics. It was a huge surprise," he told The Evening News & Tribune.
Surprise to Kermit, maybe, but if you talk to his peers in Louisville and southern Indiana, the Male High School graduate's rise to the top of his profession has been well earned: A journey that has been, in his own words, a "long, tough road with a few bumps."
Kermit's start in the game came at Sawyer Youth Soccer in Louisville at the age of 10 and it wasn't long before the prospect of refereeing was put to him.
"When I was 13 or 14 years old, my coach Kent Powell, came to practice one day and said that the SYSA program needed referees and they would pay our way through the clinic,” says Kermit. “All we had to do was referee one game a day on the weekends for about six weeks. I enjoyed it and it was an easy way to make money."
He went to a United States Soccer Federation course taught by local referees Brian Darling and Bill Beatty, and from there began working many youth tournaments.
His big break came when he was invited to referee the first ever women’s league final in Cincinnati, Ohio in 1995. It was there that he was spotted by the national director of officials, Vinny Mauro, and was given the opportunity to referee at the youth national finals in Indianapolis.
After that, he was chosen to become an assistant referee in what was then the new Major League Soccer.
In 1997, Kermit moved to Florida to take a job as an assistant athletic trainer at Jacksonville University and became a national referee the following year. Attending amateur regional and youth games there helped him advance onto the USSF’s panel for FIFA, soccer’s world governing body.
"By meeting new people and proving that I had the ability to referee at the highest level, it opened the doors to being appointed to the international panel," he says.
Since hearing the news that he is Beijing bound as an assistant referee, Kermit has had a hectic schedule, comprising a lot of training and meetings.
"My referee team has worked 2010 World Cup qualifiers (including Costa Rica against Grenada, and Cayman Islands against Bermuda), as well as MLS games together in order to get better prepared on how to act and react in different situations,” he said.
They arrived in China last Thursday (July 31), and when the 16 team men’s tournament commences on Thursday - a day before the Olympic Games opening ceremony - they will have already had meetings and training sessions every day in order to prepare them for the games.
Although he hopes he won't be too much in the spotlight, Kermit will still have many supporters cheering him on, none more so than his family, who are steeped in soccer.
His mother, Estelle, has been a referee assignor since 1984, becoming a high school assignor for the Louisville area in 1998. His father, Gordon, is a referee assessor and instructor, who got involved in the game when Kermit's teams in high school didn’t have enough officials to go round. And his brother, Mark, has also attained the grade of state referee.
They -- and Kermit -- know that a good performance during the competition could see him in line to officiate at the 2010 World Cup in South Africa.
You can follow his progress on the US Olympic Referees’ blog at Olympicrefs.blogspot.com.
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