One day, Sam Singletary’s friend, Jack Holland, asked Sam to referee a soccer game. Forty-seven years later, Sam has retired. During his service, he refereed five games each week—three on Saturdays, and two on Tuesdays. The Parks and Recreation Department estimates he has refereed 60,000 youth playing soccer, basketball, and flag football.
“I always have people coming up to me saying, ‘I remember you,’” Sam said. He regularly runs into people he refereed who are now over 40 years old. Sam has even refereed games for three generations of players from one family.
Sam graduated from East Bay High School in 1965. He served 11 months in the U.S. Army in Vietnam and returned to the U.S. in 1967. Then he got a job with Southwest Florida Water Management and worked there for 44 years. The company trained him on the job, and in five years he became a Surveying Party Chief. “I enjoyed my work. It was really a good job. I enjoyed being out in nature,” he commented. “Most of the time you were around water. Every job was different.”
When Sam was growing up, there was no organized soccer in the U.S. And there were no recreational leagues in smaller towns. High school teams were the only option. “I was small,” Sam said. “When I graduated, I weighed only 130 pounds. So I didn’t play football. I couldn’t play baseball because—you know—too small. So, when they asked me to referee and coach I liked it. I thought, ‘Maybe I can give these kids a chance to do something I never got to do.’ I’ve enjoyed every year of it.”
When Sam began refereeing, the pay was $5 per game. “It wasn’t about the money,” he said. “I couldn’t care less. I would have done it for nothing. I don’t even know how much I got paid.”
Sam got in the habit of telling parents on the sidelines, “Now look, if ya’ll are here to watch the game, at least yell at me even if I am doing a good job. It encourages me.” Sam added, “The parents were really nice. I usually didn’t have any problems with the parents. I never had too many problems with the kids out there. I like the kids to have fun. The last four or five years I didn’t give out any cards. I told them, ‘If I give you a red card, you can’t play the rest of this game, or the next game, so why don’t you go sit on the bench for 15 minutes, then you can come back and play.’ They don’t like to sit on the bench.” Then Sam would warn the kids if they did the same thing again they would get a red card, but none of them ever repeated the foul.
“I couldn’t have done any of this without my church people at East Side Baptist Church, or my religion,” Sam said. “That really means a lot to me.”
Sam and his wife have been married for 55 years. “Without a good man, you have to have a good woman.” Sam opined. They have one son who lives in Hillsborough County. Upon his retirement, Sam told managers for the city, “I worked for 47 years, all I am asking for retirement is $47—one dollar for each year so I can take my wife out to dinner.” They said, ‘That’s not enough to take her out to a decent place.’” Sam chuckled at the story.
Sam continues to work at Plant City events like Easter egg hunts and the Fourth of July celebration. “I really had fun for these last 47 years,” Sam added. “But, don’t get me wrong, I am not through.”