Sally Walker will take a lot of heat when she's umpiring a softball game -- mostly because she knows what it's like to be the one who doesn't agree with an official's call. As the athletics director at University Laboratory High School in Urbana, Illinois, and a former coach and player, Walker has clashed with her share of officials.

"I'm very critical of officials. I expect people to be out there doing their job, doing it well and doing it right," she said.

At first, her family downplayed her new hobby, pointing out that she was umpiring lo-
cal recreational league games. She admits she began the job at first simply because a friend asked her to and because the extra cash she would get from calling weeknight recreational league games would help pay for her to play in her own league on the weekends.

But over the last 23 years, Walker grew more and more serious about the game. So serious, in fact, that she works at University High only a handful of days in the month of May and has officiated two Women's College World Series, one of the highest honors an umpire in her game can attain.

"(The players and the coaches) are all out there because they believe they deserve to be national champions. They're going to fight their hardest to be there. We had great games and not a lot of stuff on the side that we had to deal with. It was certainly something I'll never forget, and I hope I get to go back there someday and relive it," she said. "The nice thing about the World Series is that everybody is on their best behavior because they know they're on television."

Walker has had a lifelong love of softball. She grew up with a father who played the sport professionally; she played at the University of West Virginia and then moved to Illinois to play with a fastpitch team. She planned on going back to West Virginia for graduate school after that first summer, but never quite made it back, instead taking a job at University High and passing her love of athletics on to the students there.

The job provided her with the opportunity to grow as an official, even as she moved up the career ladder in the school's athletics department. Her progress as an umpire evolved as well, to the point at which she became an NCAA Division I official.

"It's a great fit. A lot of people question how I'm able to do it. I have a great staff of assistant administrators here in the athletics department and a very supportive boss," she said. "I probably offer a different perspective than a lot of people have because I see it from both ends. I also am able to see and feel how coaches feel during games, because I've been there. I think that helps me. I'm not just seeing it from one side."

That multi-dimensional approach also helps her in dealing with criticism on the field. While many umpires take pride in the number of people they have ejected over the years, Walker proudly reports that she has never thrown a coach out of a game, and in the few instances where she's had to kick out a player, it was for arguing with the other official.

"There have been a lot of cases where probably I should have (thrown a coach out), where I took too much, but I'll take it that way as opposed to having a trigger-happy finger and sending someone out when it's unwarranted," she said.

Walker's love for the game is apparent in conversation, though she feels that her passion for the game -- and that of other officials -- often is discounted or ignored by fans and even coaches upset over a call or a mistake someone may have made. Sometimes, the intense criticism of an official, especially if it gets personal, can take the pleasure out of calling a game and even cause young officials to leave the career prematurely.

"Most of the time, (harsh critics) just don't put a human face with that official. They're just an official out there, and I don't think they take the time to think about why it is that people get involved with officiating," she said, listing a variety of reasons someone might do so, including a desire to give back and an affinity for being part of the athletics process.

"For most people, I think it's because they love the game," she said, adding that she also loves the challenge. "I love softball. It's always been the game for me, and I'll do anything to be around it. I'm just an avid softball fan, I guess."