Elbert Olney “Bowser” Chest officiated his first basketball game as an eighteen-year-old Hume-Fogg High School student; some thirty years later, in 1953, he worked his final college game, an Auburn-Alabama SEC contest. During those years from the mid-1920s to the mid-1950s, Chest blazed the trail for basketball officials, not only in the South, but for the entire nation. With his shrieking whistle and booming voice, Chest set a style that has been copied many times since. He worked all the major tournaments and was the first Southerner ever to officiate in the NCAA tournament finals, working the 1949 championship in Madison Square Garden. The year before his NCAA assignment, Chest called a double-overtime game between Kentucky and the Phillips Oilers in the 1948 Olympic trials game at Kansas City, a game he called his biggest officiating thrill. Chest worked approximately 2,500 games in his illustrious career, but his top personal honor came as a high school player at Hume-Fogg in Nashville, where his 1921-1922 team beat Morgan Prep in the state finals, and Chest was named all-state. “It was the first recognition I had received for my talent,” said Chest. “Things like that stay imbedded in your memory.” Chest rendered invaluable service to the SEC in setting up a basketball officials organization. His keen knowledge of the rules and his “feel” of players’ competitive temperaments made him matchless during his long officiating career.
