It started as a necessity.
Babies need diapers, after all.
It grew into a passion now rolling well into its fifth decade.
In 1984, when then 27-year-old David Briseño and his wife, Margaret, were expecting their second child and the $1,000 a month he was bringing home as a teacher wasn’t cutting it, he needed a way to bring in a few extra bucks.
He found a temporary side gig. He became a basketball referee.
“I’d take any (game) that came my way,” Briseño said. “With the growing family, I found a way to buy milk and Pampers and it was by officiating ball games ... junior high, sub-varsity games, whatever game I could get assigned, I’d take.”
Then a funny thing happened on the way to pick up some diapers.
Briseño’s side gig was quickly becoming his first love, well, after that growing family, of course.
Junior high basketball games a couple times a week turned into some football games, too. And then spring brought in more sports.
“Folks around me would say every time my wife got pregnant, I found a new sport to officiate,” Briseño said.
The math checks out. He has four children — Abran, David Jr., Augi and Maria are the kids and basketball, football, baseball and softball are the sports.
Now into his fifth decade wearing the stripes in New Mexico and with thousands of games under his belt, the 70-year-old Briseño lives in Clovis — retired as an educator but working fulltime at La Casa Health Center, one of the state’s federally qualified health centers servicing three Eastern New Mexico counties.
And the officiating is down to one, sometimes two games a week. Friday night, he was the “white hat” (lead official) for the Mayfield at Goddard game in Roswell, a day after working the rare (anymore) non-varsity game in Portales.
It’s something he never imagined would have lasted this long.
“It became something where, well there was sort of an addiction that comes with getting out on a field or getting on the basketball court or for many others who are on the volleyball court,” Briseño said. “There’s just something there. I still get the butterflies. I still get the excitement of working a ball game. ...
“The game itself, of course, but the bigger reason I’ve done this so long isn’t about the games, but the people — the development of relationships with my co-officials and about how much pride it gives me knowing that in some small way, the kids are getting to play these games, at least in part, because we’re there to make it happen, and hopefully call a good, fair game while we’re at it. That’s the goal, of course.”
Just one of many
The New Mexico Activities Association, the state’s governing board of sports and other extra curricular activities in the state, sanctions or oversees sporting events and other activities that affect roughly 30,000 participants a year in the state.
As much as most fans love to give them a hard time or blame every non-perfect moment of any game on the men and women in those striped shirts, the reality is none of this happens without them.
And in an honest moment not talking about their emotionally invested opinions on their kids’ teams, most sane parents and fans would tell you they’re mostly pretty darn good at what they do.
Briseño says, he’s merely one of hundreds who are making the high school sports machine work in New Mexico — “just one who is older than some of the other ones so I’ve been doing it longer.”
He’s not entirely wrong. This column was aimed at profiling the work of high school referees. Briseño is just the guy representing that larger story.
But don’t let him sell his accomplishments short, either. He’s pretty darn good at what he does, as the years of national and state honors, including induction this past summer into the New Mexico Officials Association Hall of Fame.
“David brings tremendous experience, integrity, and a commitment to excellence to officiating in New Mexico,” said NMAA Executive Director Dusty Young. “What makes David a Hall of Famer is not just what he has accomplished on the field, but the lasting impact he has made on fellow officials, student-athletes, and the entire New Mexico sports community.”
In 2017, Briseño was honored nationally by the National Federation of State High School Associations for distinguished service. He’s also served as president of the NMOA Board of Directors and represents the NMOA on the NMAA Commission.
Some we’ve heard of
Briseño says he’s been blessed to do this as long as he has.
He’s called state championship games in multiple sports, officiating games with kids named Brian Urlacher, Bobby Newcombe, Kamal Cass, Hank Baskett and more. He recalls that time a dozen or so Major League Baseball scouts were in the stands to watch a young baseball player names Shane Andrews in a game between his Carlsbad Cavemen and the Clovis Wildcats with Briseño as umpire.
“I rang him up on a third strike and man, I think it was a great call,” Briseño recalls, telling the story like it just happened yesterday. “He (Andrews) didn’t appreciate it, though. But he didn’t say a word. He took it like a man, went to the bench. He gave me a look though, but didn’t say anything.
“Next time he comes up to bat: first pitch, right down the pipe. Boom! He hits it out of the park, over the street onto the roof of a auto shop across the street from the field. He didn’t want me to have anything to do with that at bat.”
He chuckles as he recalls the stories of the big name athletes he’s seen, but takes as much pride in the work he did knowing he got to be a part of thousands of other kids getting their big night under the lights and on the field, too.
Is the end near?
Briseño can’t keep up with the players quite like he used to.
“I don’t even try anymore,” he admits. “You just do the best you can. Some Friday nights, I feel better than others ... but lately, I’ve been feeling pretty good.”
He seems to have a routine to this kind of talk. He tells his wife this might be the last year he does it, and yet also seems to tell everyone else he’ll do it as long as he can.
On the one hand, without her, he wouldn’t have been able to do any of this as long as he has. On the other hand ...
“When I first started doing it, I’d go out every chance I got to do a game for extra money,” he said. “And she would say, ‘You’re going out again?’
“Then after a while, I started taking a few nights off because I earned a little bit more money at the real job and didn’t need to do many games. Then she’d just look at me and say, ‘Don’t you have somewhere you have to be?’”
Truth is, it’s close. He’s 70 and the Saturday mornings aren’t as kind to the body after a Friday night football game anymore. But when Briseño does call it a career, he knows there’s a good crop of referees coming up in this state that makes him feel more comfortable about leaving the game.
“I want the kids playing to always have a shot at a fair game,” he said. “I really did take that as a big responsibility we had (as officials). And there are some real good, young ones coming up now. I really believe that.”
And for now, there’s still at least one pretty darn good one down in Clovis who can call a pretty good game himself.
Geoff Grammer is the Sports Editor of the Journal, a podcaster, columnist and covers UNM Lobos basketball, among other things. Every Monday, he tries to profile a New Mexican doing their part to make this state what it is. Reach him at ggrammer@abqjournal.com or follow him on Twitter (X) @GeoffGrammer.
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