But additional local interest will be generated by the presence of two officials from the Mirror coverage area who will be presiding over many of those matches.

Brian Murphy, a 1990 PIAA Class 2A state wrestling champion at Cambria Heights, and Juniata Valley graduate Jim Rivello, both have multiple years of officiating experience calling the action at the NCAA Division I Wrestling Championships, and both will be on hand in Cleveland this weekend with their whistles in hand.

This year will mark the 11th straight appearance as an official at the NCAA Division I Championships for Rivello, 51, and the fifth NCAA Division I Championships assignment for Murphy.

Nate Chatman, 52, who resides in Hollidaysburg, hung up his referee’s whistle this year after 27 years of officiating and appearances at nine NCAA Division I Championships.

Official Jim Rivello is a Juniata Valley High School graduate.

All three know the officiating ropes well, and they have all demonstrated excellence in their craft by navigating the NCAA’s stringent annual selection process that determines its crew of officials for its biggest wrestling event of the year.

“It’s humbling, and it’s an honor,” said Rivello of his consecutive string of selections for the NCAA Division I Championships. “I remember how thrilling it was for me to set foot on the mat in (New York’s) Madison Square Garden for my first NCAA Championships appearance in 2016, and it is still a thrill.

“I’ve worked hard to network with other officials, I’ve kept on top of the NCAA wrestling rule book for any changes that have taken place over the years, and I’ve tried to do my best when I’ve been working the matches themselves,” added Rivello, who has 15 years of experience as an NCAA wrestling official and has also worked six NCAA Division II and Division III Championships events.

Rivello said that he has worked five NCAA Division I championship finals matches during his career as a college official, and that last year’s 285-pound title bout between the University of Minnesota’s Gable Steveson and Oklahoma State’s Wyatt Hendrickson at Philadelphia’s Wells Fargo Center (since renamed the Xfinity Mobile Arena), was the most exciting bout that he has worked to date.

Steveson, who earned a gold medal in freestyle wrestling for the United States in the 2020 Summer Olympics, entered last March’s NCAA championship match with a streak of 70 consecutive wins, but Hendrickson pulled off a monumental 5-4 upset by scoring a late third-period takedown.

Courtesy photo Nate Chatman resides in Hollidaysburg.

“It was the last match of the tournament, involving an Olympic gold medalist, and it was a phenomenal experience to be on the mat for that match,” said Rivello, who lives in Huntingdon and is a teacher at the Tuscarora Intermediate Unit for court-adjudicated youths.

Murphy, a three-time PIAA wrestling medalist who became a Class 2A state champion for Cambria Heights at 145 pounds in 1990, lives in Baltimore and has had a decorated 30-year career in teaching, administration, and counseling at that city’s St. Joseph’s High School.

Murphy is the son of Harry and Sandy Murphy, who both coached several sports for several decades at Cambria Heights, and who now reside in Hollidaysburg.

Brian Murphy has had his share of thrills as an official at the NCAA Championships, and said that each tournament is unique.

“I’ve been fortunate to have had some pretty exciting things happen in my life, but I will say this – each NCAA Wrestling Championships features its own uniqueness,” said Murphy, who secured an NCAA Division I wrestling scholarship to Notre Dame that the university honored in its entirety despite the fact that the school abolished its wrestling program after Murphy’s freshman season there back in 1992. “I don’t know what’s going to be the case for the 2026 tournament, but I look forward to experiencing it, I know that.”

One of Murphy’s biggest thrills as an official at the NCAA Championships occurred in 2018 at Cleveland’s Quicken Loans Arena, when Penn State’s Bo Nickal earned the Nittany Lions the team championship over runner-up Ohio State by pinning the Buckeyes’ Miles Martin in 2:29 at 184 pounds.

“Bo Nickal was losing that match but he hit an elevator move and pinned Miles Martin,” Murphy said. “After that win, the crowd erupted, the stage was shaking, and the hair on my arms was standing up. It was such an adrenalin rush – the entire arena had just seen something incredible.”

Murphy experienced another thrill at the 2021 NCAA Division I Championships, which, due to COVID-19 restrictions, was held without any fans in the seats at the Enterprise Center in St. Louis. After Stanford University had initially announced a decision to cancel its wrestling program, the Stanford administration reversed its decision following a major fund-raising effort for the program and wrestler Shane Griffith’s national title victory at 165 pounds. Murphy served as the second official on the mat for Griffith’s championship match in 2021.

“He kind of saved their wrestling program,” Murphy said. “And as an official, that was kind of a pretty special thing to be a part of that match.”

Murphy was also on the mat as an official last season in Philadelphia, when Penn State’s Carter Starocci won his unprecedented fifth NCAA championship by topping Northern Iowa’s Parker Keickesen, 4-3 in the 184-pound title match.

Due to knee problems, Chatman was forced to retire from officiating this year, but he still had a fantastic run in his nearly three decades as a wrestling official, working nine NCAA Championships, as well as numerous PIAA and NCAA Division II Championships.

Chatman’s father Bernie was a long-time PIAA and NCAA wrestling official who was inducted into the Pennsylvania wing of the National Wrestling Hall of Fame in 2024, and Nate Chatman has been nominated for a similar honor in 2027.

Having his father in his corner as an accomplished official and mentor in his officiating career “meant everything to me,” said Nate Chatman, who works in real estate and is also a business owner, working with his father, who is a retired Pennsylvania state policeman, in running the Keystone Investigations Security Specialists Agency.

Though his officiating days are over, Nate Chatman has kept his hand in the sport of wrestling by working as a conference coordinator for the Pennsylvania State Athletic Commission (PSAC), for which he is responsible for assigning duties and scheduling evaluations for all the officials who work the PSAC matches and tournaments.

Nate Chatman said that his father helped him to learn the ropes in college officiating, but Nate still needed to endure an initial adjustment process.

“Coaches want to see the calls go their way, and when you’re new at anything, you can be easy to rattle,” Nate Chatman said. “My father always emphasized to me the importance of not letting them see you sweat, and not cracking under pressure.

“(Officiating) takes a lot of focus,” added Nate Chatman, who, like Murphy and Rivello, had a scholastic wrestling background as an athlete at the former Lewistown High School. “There are so many things to learn in regards to positioning. Anticipation is the big one – anticipating where the wrestler is going to wind up from the position that they’re in – and polishing those skills.

“Wrestling is one of the few sports in which it is very hard to become a referee, unless you’ve wrestled in the past.”

Possessing excellent people skills is also essential for any official.

“Having a love for the sport of wrestling is important, but I think that the biggest thing for me as an official is to combine patience with calmness, focus and assertiveness, especially in pressure situations,” said Murphy, who began officiating wrestling at the collegiate level back in 2008. “Showing respect for the coaches, wrestlers, and other officials, emphasizing sportsmanship, and being unbiased and being open to constructive criticism and learning is also vital.”

To become an official for the NCAA Division I Wrestling Championships is, in itself, a pinnacle-type of achievement in the sport.

“One of my best memories is that I was selected so many times for the NCAA Division I nationals,” Nate Chatman said. “They evaluate you all season, every season, and it’s quite a process. They break it down to who they feel are the top 50 officials in the country for that year, and they select the top 20 out of that group to work the nationals.”

Nate Chatman said that Murphy and Rivello are both top-notch officials whom he has known for many, many years.

“They do everything the right way – they’re both cut from the same cloth,” Chatman said. “Murph is a solid official who does a great job. I would gladly have him working with me in matches. Jimmy is like a brother to me. We grew up and competed in the sport of wrestling together, and we have spent so much time together that when we were officiating a match, we didn’t have to talk much – we could just look at each other and know what the other was thinking.”

Mentorship vital, appreciated

All three officials have pointed to mentors who have been influential in the formation and development of their officiating careers.

In Nate Chatman’s case, it has been his father, an esteemed official from whom Nate learned and developed the craft.

Murphy’s father, Harry, who started the wrestling program at Cambria Heights and coached Brian there, has also been instrumental in Brian cultivating and maintaining a love for the sport of wrestling that made him want to stay involved in it after his days as a competitor and his four years as a coach at St. Joseph’s.

Another of Brian Murphy’s mentors has been former long-time college official Tom Gaylin, who has presided over 10 consecutive NCAA Division I Championships events himself and has earned induction into the National Wrestling Hall of Fame as a Meritorious Official.

“I was fortunate enough to be able to attend a referee’s training program in Maryland under the direction of some officials with national experience, and after a few years I was asked by one of those officials, Tom Gaylin, who was a college assigner, to start working college events for him,” said Murphy, who started his officiating career overseeing junior high school matches and continued to work his way up the ladder.

“He was one of the people who helped to get me started in college officiating and who gave me some great opportunities, and it was up to me to make the most of the situation.”

Rivello credits Bernie and Nate Chatman, along with legendary long-time PIAA wrestling official Bruce Haselrig, for taking him under their wings and teaching him the nuances of officiating.

“Bruce, Bernie and Nate opened the door for me to get into collegiate officiating,” said Rivello, who also has nearly three decades of experience as a PIAA wrestling and football official. “All three of them possess a plethora of wrestling knowledge, and they have all been great mentors for me.”

Haselrig, who spent 40 years as a PIAA wrestling official and the past 10 years as an evaluator of District 6 officials for the PIAA, is a retired administrator at the University of Pittsburgh at Johnstown, but he still schedules officials for the Mountain Cats’ home matches at the UPJ Sports Complex.

Haselrig has scheduled Murphy, Rivello and Chatman for UPJ matches, and holds all three in high regard.

“They’re all very poised out on the mat, and they don’t get flustered in tense situations,” said Haselrig, who also served as an official at national tournaments on both the NCAA Division II and NAIA levels. “It just goes to show how far they’ve come and continue to go, and now they’re helping a lot of younger officials who are just starting.

“All three of them are top-shelf, classy guys, and they all set a good example with the way that they carry themselves on and off the mat.”