By David McIver
of The Crossroads

After nine years, local teacher Richard Berezowski has retired as a referee for the Canadian Football League.

Local teacher Richard Berezowski has has called his last game as a referee in the Canadian Football League.

Aug. 2 was his 100th game, Berezowski said. He had experienced highs and lows in what daughter Chantal called his “second life.”

Along the way, he’s had interesting experiences and met some interesting people.

The most gentlemanly player he’s met might be Odell Wills, the Edmonton Eskimo defensive end and former Saskatchewan Roughrider.

“He was always good to talk to,” said Berezowski.

Some others are “more in your face,” although a couple of them, if they were excited about something, probably had a point, he said.

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Some players “might be angry or just working you for the next call, playing that angle, trying to plant that seed of ‘You maybe missed that one,’ ” he said.

His favourite was probably cornerback Dwight Anderson, a one-time Rider.

“Every play he was chirping about something,” Berezowski said.

“You try to distract him from what he’s doing. One time I asked him about his shoes and he just totally went off on a tangent about shoes,” he said, laughing. “It was hilarious.”

After a game one night, Berezowski and other officials ran into Anderson on the street.

“We have a chat with him. He knew who we were. We knew who he was and just have a visit with him. They’re just people.”

Some coaches are easy to deal with and some are not. John Hufnagel, Wally Buono and Rick Campbell never gave him a problem. Of Buono, he said, “You get him mad, you’ve done something (wrong).”

Kent Austin “was always a challenge. You didn’t know which one was going to show up,” he said.

He understands why coaches get on the officials.

“It’s their job, their livelihood. It’s how they feed themselves. So it gets excited.”

To help deal with that, a referee must try to always communicate with coaches, he said. For example, telling them about timeouts beforehand so they know how much time they have.

A surprise for Berezowski when he joined the league in 2009 was the level of professionalism, which includes weekly evaluations, pre-game meetings with strict agendas and videos to study, going over points the league wants to emphasize.

“You get evaluated every game, every play,” he said. “They look at and check what you missed and what you got; if it was a good call, bad call, if you missed something, your mechanics.”

A low point was when Berezowski missed something, badly, and as a result got fired. In a 2011 game in Winnipeg, he called pass interference on Montreal Alouettes cornerback Greg Laybourn for preventing Blue Bomber receiver Greg Carr from catching a ball.

It happened in the last three minutes of the game, when coaches couldn’t throw a challenge flag to officials’ calls.

The Alouettes won 32-26 but the controversial play and call were discussed in national media.

Two days later, officiating director Tom Higgins dismissed Berezowski from doing anymore games that year and the next year.

On the play, as side judge, Berezowski had to stay where the first down would be and then look downfield at the receiver. Carr had got tangled up with Laybourn and was falling down.

“And I did what I shouldn’t do,” he said. “I took a guess. And that was wrong.”

According to Berezowski, the firing may have happened because of something Higgins told media later: “The football gods smiled on us because Montreal didn’t score.”

“Well, Montreal flew into a rage over that comment and I think I was let go because they needed someone to (take the blame), which was fair,” Berezowski said. “It was a bad call.”

But, after he worked a year as referee in university games, the CFL called. While he doesn’t know completely the situation, he does know an official had retired and, because he had experience, he was brought back but to work from a different position, as line judge on the line of scrimmage.

There, Berezowski did some of his best work in his first six games back, recording some of the league’s highest marks, he said.

But regardless of how it’s been since, that ‘second life’ in the CFL and teaching was getting to be too much, Berezowski said last week.

In May and June, he was away from home for four out of five weeks.

“It was a struggle because I was behind in my marking and my school work,” he said. He would lose a day of school work, return to marking not done and have “to catch up to where the kids are,” he said.

The demands weren’t just the games but the off-season work required, said Berezowski. That included reviewing rules, study sessions, travelling to and from meetings and physical workouts because of fitness tests.

That starts in January and continues into November.

While the demands may be more suited for full-time work, the CFL can’t afford that and even the wealthier National Football League doesn’t have all full-time officials, he said.

Berezowski’s school workload is heavier this year and he didn’t know how he could do that while being away every weekend. To do his officiating work, he needed and had the full support of his family and his employer, he said.

Looking back, he regrets the toll that controversial penalty call and media attention had on his family. His father died in December 2012 and didn’t get to see his son’s reinstatement, which happened in June 2013. Also, family trips in the summer were always limited by game commitments.

But family and work won’t have that distraction.

“Already, I’m looking forward to next summer,” Berezowski said.

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