There’s no dollar amount that can convince Kerry Wenbourne to suit up and officiate high school basketball games four, sometimes five nights a week.

But a deep connection to the sport and sheer enjoyment of the experience? That’ll work almost every time.

The Pierre native and long-time Aberdeen resident has been a fixture in officiating stripes and umpire’s jersey for well over four decades, and he has no plans on hanging it up just yet.

“I’ve just always done it,” Wenbourne said. 

Sports have been a part of Wenbourne’s life since, well, most of it. He grew up playing baseball, football and basketball in high school, then attended the University of South Dakota, where he played baseball. 

Officiating, specifically on the baseball field, was just a natural progression of that. He got into coaching at the American Legion and Teener levels during the summers, and, by extension, umpiring.

It stuck.

When Wenbourne moved to Aberdeen in 1976, he again got involved almost immediately. He started working the YMCA tournament, then men’s league basketball, then moved on to high school when former Roncalli Athletic Director Tom Murphy needed a partner.

He has continued to do baseball games and, more recently, has dipped a toe into doing some high school volleyball matches.

“I like sports,” Wenbourne said. “I like to see it done the right way. That’s why I’ve done it.”

Wenbourne draws a paycheck for his games, same as every other official, but for him, it’s not a driving incentive to keep going.

“The only reason you do it is because you like to,” he said. “The money’s not worth it.”

There’s also the camaraderie with other officials, plus the added bonus of watching one generation grow up to be parents and their children now becoming the athletes playing in the games Wenbourne officiates.

“In umping especially, I’ve done a lot of umping of kids where I did their dad’s games,” Wenbourne said. “That’s a pretty neat deal.”

These days, roughly half of Wenbourne’s games consist of the sub-varsity contests at Aberdeen Central, but the other half takes him to some outlying communities, and he’s seen some of the best athletes the northeastern corner of South Dakota has produced.

“There’s a lot of kids that were fun to watch,” he said.

Of course, that’s the bright side of the profession, the one that’s fun to talk about. Wenbourne can tell stories upon stories of watching athletes from Eric Kline to Paiton Burckhardt and all the ones in between.

The dark side – and there is one – is less fun, but no less a reality. The well of qualified, dedicated officials in South Dakota is drying up.

“When I was in high school, if I had ever come home and said, ‘I hate (my coach),’ my mom would have said, ‘What are you talking about? You do what he tells you to,’” Wenbourne said. “Now, there’s a lot of questioning from parents.”

That has deterred some from even picking up a whistle, Wenbourne said. 

Others have started, even in college, doing games for a bit of extra spending money. That, he said, is the wrong reason to start.

“You just gotta have it in your blood to do it,” he said.

Regardless, the current stable of basketball officials is aging out of the profession, Wenbourne said.

“We’re going to be in big trouble here,” he said. “I don’t know what percentage it is, but I would guess 70 percent of us are over 50, I think. There’s not too many as old as me, but there’s some in their early 60s. They’re all going to quit about the same time. I don’t know what’s going to happen.”

Wenbourne has stuck it out for decades, through two knee replacements and other circumstances that would have been enough for some others.

“(My wife) Pam has never had any problem with me doing it,” he said. “And I’m gone a lot.”

Wenbourne’s schedule can take him to a gym nearly every night of the week, save Wednesdays and Sundays, but he said his wife and children have always been supportive and understanding of it.

At present, Wenbourne is penciling out his schedule for the 2023-24 season.

“I look forward to games,” he said. “If I didn’t have that, I don’t know what I’d do. But I’ve been lucky, my family let me do it.”