Originally published in the March 2000 edition of Referee Magazine.
https://www.referee.com/ron-foxcroft-fox-40-whistle-official/
Before the Fox 40 whistle, Ron Foxcroft spent 35 years officiating basketball worldwide, including the 1976 Olympic gold medal game.
When people in officiating circles hear the name Ron Foxcroft, they think of the man who developed the Fox 40 whistle. Comparatively few realize that Foxcroft himself had a fine career as an official. The Hamilton, Ontario, resident spent 35 years running up and down basketball courts around the world. But when the ball went up for the start of the 1999-00 college basketball season late last year, Foxcroft was on the sidelines. Increasing demands on his time forced Foxcroft to retire at the age of 53. The last game he worked matched DePaul against California in the first round of last season’s National Invitation Tournament. Foxcroft probably could have stayed on a few more years, but he felt that his employees at Fox 40 needed to see more of their boss. Foxcroft founded the company in 1987 and, since then, has sold more than 100 million whistles. “I fit my employees and my distributors around my officiating schedule,” said Foxcroft. “For too long, our business was strong thanks to them.” In addition to being concerned about the quality of his work at the office, Foxcroft felt the caliber of his work on the floor was in decline. “I was never a great official,” Foxcroft said. “I was slipping, and I didn’t want to go from being an average official to a poor one, so I decided it would be my last season.”
Foxcroft may have been underestimating his talents. He worked five NCAA tournaments, an Olympic final and numerous other high level international games during the course of his career. But despite his accomplishments, he tried not to let officiating become an obsession. Perhaps the unconventional road that he traveled to the top had something to do with shaping that philosophy.
Growing up in Hamilton, Foxcroft wanted to be a football player and succeeded as a fair high school quarterback until he was sidelined by a back injury. In the mid ’60s, at age 18, he started officiating CYO basketball for 75 cents per game. It was hardly an auspicious debut when he received his first “paycheck” and the coach asked him for change.
But Foxcroft stuck with it and soon became an officiating phenom in Canada. Basketball Canada, the national governing body, wanted to enhance the nation’s credibility at the international level. That included finding young officials who could handle the rigors of topflight international competition.
Foxcroft was put on a fast track. By the end of his first season in officiating, he had worked his first Canadian college game, and it wasn’t long before he was working international games under the auspices of FIBA, basketball’s international governing body. By 1974, Foxcroft was working the World Championships in San Juan, Puerto Rico. That assignment led to a trip to Montreal for the Olympic Games two years later. At that time, the international basketball community in general, and Americans in particular, were still reeling from the 1972 gold medal game that saw the Soviet Union hand the United States its first ever loss in Olympic basketball competition, albeit in controversial fashion. According to Foxcroft, FIBA referees were generally not highly regarded at that time. The conventional wisdom was that they lacked understanding of the game, didn’t understand what Americans would consider basic floor mechanics and were subject to nationalistic influences.
But Foxcroft found an ally in Hank Nichols, who at the time was considered one of the finest basketball officials in the world and who happened to be Foxcroft’s roommate in Montreal. The two quickly developed a mutual respect.
Foxcroft was named to officiate the gold medal game between the United States and Yugoslavia, but he maintains that he was far from being the top official in the tournament. He was, however, on the floor while Nichols, an American and therefore excluded from officiating a game involving the American team, remained in the stands. Foxcroft worked the game without difficulty, and the Americans beat Yugoslavia easily, but Foxcroft still thinks Nichols, who currently serves as the NCAA coordinator of men’s basketball officials, should have been on the court that night. “Hank Nichols could referee rings around me,” Foxcroft said. “To lose somebody (for the final) who was the best official in the world, I thought was unfair.”
Foxcroft’s Olympic experience helped develop his philosophy regarding assignments: Don’t “crow” about your big games or complain about the ones you don’t get. “The line between getting an assignment and not getting one is so thin,” he said. “I got the ’76 Olympic finals, and I wasn’t the best referee at the tournament. You get some games you don’t deserve and don’t get some that maybe you do deserve. I went to many (FIBA) assignments after that and got many finals after that. I wasn’t necessarily the best referee, but I got the assignment anyway.”
Foxcroft also got a big break shortly after the Olympics when the Amateur Basketball Association of the United States of America (a forerunner of USA Basketball) contacted him about working an upcoming tour of the United States by the Soviet Union national team. In those years, the Soviets would regularly tour the U.S. prior to the start of each college season, playing the defending national champion and other top college teams. Foxcroft was paired with Manny Reynoso from Mexico, and the two of them worked virtually every game the Russians played against American opposition for the next 12 years.
“Those games were like war,” Foxcroft said. “I can’t tell you what the tension was like. But Bill Wall (ABAUSA’s executive director) always supported us.”
While working those games, Foxcroft became acquainted with the late Aleksandr Gomelsky, the long-time coach of the Soviet national team. “He was a bear to work for,” Foxcroft recalled. “There were moments when he feigned not understanding English when he understood every word. But we became very respectful of each other.”
After working the first Soviet tour, Foxcroft was encouraged by veteran official Jack Manton to apply to the Sun Belt Conference, since Foxcroft had a home in Florida. When he called the conference office to ask for an application, he was told: “You worked USA-Russia. You can handle any game we’ve got.”
Within two years, Foxcroft was working Division I games, but the road was not easy. In addition to the battle for acceptance all new officials must fight, Foxcroft had to deal with his Canadian background. He was a new face to the coaches he was working for, none of whom had ever seen him work at the high school or small college level, and some of them questioned his competence because of his nationality.
“They didn’t know me from a load of hay,” Foxcroft recalled. “My international experience meant zero. All they said was: ‘That’s a rotten call, but what do you expect? He’s Canadian.’”
At times, relations with his partners were no better. Some of them resented the fact that Foxcroft, a Canadian, was taking assignments away from American officials.
There were just two men on a crew in those days and Foxcroft had some difficult nights on the floor and in the locker room. “There were a couple who were resentful,” he said. “They felt their buddies should have gotten (my position on the Sun Belt staff). One guy was particularly stressed. Before the game he said, ‘My buddy is better than you.’ Then afterward he said, ‘You can ref.’ That meant a lot.”
Gradually, Foxcroft gained acceptance. He worked games in seven major conferences over the course of his career. His last season, he worked in the Atlantic 10, the Ohio Valley and the Metro Atlantic Athletic conferences. He went to the NCAA tournament five times and reached the Sweet 16 in 1998. After his rough start, he appreciated the way his partners accepted him as he proved his competence.
“The most important thing to me was the respect of my fellow officials,” Foxcroft said. “And the thing that impressed me most was the tremendous talent of my fellow officials. Without question, the best officials in the world are Americans. I was blessed to work with those fellows.”
Not every assignment was an easy one, of course. Foxcroft was on the floor when Indiana Coach Bob Knight packed up and walked off the floor of his own gym in Bloomington, Ind., in the middle of a game against the Russians. Foxcroft thinks that Knight didn’t want to play the game in the first place. “He said, ‘My president scheduled this game. I don’t want to be here,’” Foxcroft recalled. “If there was a reason for not being there, he had 10 of them. At one point he told me, ‘Canadians can’t play this game, and you can’t ref it.’”
When Knight and his players left the floor and the game was halted, the mood of the crowd turned ugly. Foxcroft’s wife, Marie, worriedly watched from the stands. “It’s the only time I worried about my wife’s safety,” Foxcroft said.
That game was historic for a reason other than Knight’s histrionics, however. It marked the first time that Foxcroft used the commercial model of a Fox 40 whistle in a game.
Foxcroft and associate Chuck Shepherd had worked continuously for three-and-one-half years to develop a pealess whistle after Foxcroft’s traditional model let him down at a 1984 Olympic qualifying tournament in Sao Paulo, Brazil. Several prototypes and some $250,000 later, Foxcroft had what he wanted. He showed it off at the 1987 Pan-Am Games in Indianapolis and came back with orders for 20,000 of them. Today the company sells whistles around the world in nine different models and 11 different colors. The Fox 40 is used by officials in the NFL, the NBA and, soon, the NHL.
Foxcroft will now spend more time in the office, but he has other items on his agenda as well. He operates a trucking company, helps supervise and evaluate college basketball officials in Canada and has built a ski lodge in upstate New York.
And last but not least, he’s an avid fan of the Canadian Football League’s Hamilton Tiger Cats. In 1996, when the Grey Cup — Canada’s equivalent of the Super Bowl — came to Hamilton, Foxcroft cochaired the committee that put together a week of special events prior to the game. In short, he’s as busy as ever.
Recently Foxcroft was inducted into the Canadian Basketball Hall of Fame. Dr. James Naismith, who introduced the game at Springfield (Mass.) College in 1891, was a Canadian and Foxcroft feels a kinship with the game’s inventor. “He had to take his game to the States,” Foxcroft said with a wry smile. “I have great empathy for what he went through. We both got laughed out of Canada.”