Nine Final Fours: Jersey guy Joe Vaszily 'one of the best' college basketball officials
Joe Vaszily could have been a travel agent. He knows all about frequent flyer miles, car rentals and Google Maps.
Vaszily, a Westfield resident, spends cold-weather months traveling throughout the East, Midwest and South. No, he is not a traveling salesman. The 50-year-old is an NCAA women’s basketball official.
He is the guy who runs up and down the court, the guy blowing the whistle and stopping the game, the guy coaches can’t believe called that foul, the guy you scream at with your arms in the air.
But listen here, from one long-time Big East Conference coach: “He’s a great ref. One of the best.”
Vaszily has been a full-time college referee since 2015. Prior to that he split time between officiating NCAA games and a full-time job. For a combined 18 years he worked for J.P. Morgan and Goldman Sachs in New York City: Interest Rate Derivatives. He also found time to get a master’s at NYU.
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His first college game was in 1999, at Hofstra, about an hour from where he grew up on Staten Island.
That’s about as close a trip he’s had, though he’s worked games at Princeton and Rider.
He was at Princeton last Saturday for the Ivy League championship game. The day before he was in Towson, Maryland, for the Colonial Athletic Conference quarterfinals. He had flown into Maryland the day before, coming off the American Conference championship game in Fort Worth, Texas. After the Ivy game he drove back to Towson, 2 ½ hours, to do the CAA championship game.
His tournament sites the rest of this month have not yet been finalized.
Five flights in 24 hours
Among his more memorable travels was working a noon game at Georgia Tech, then having a direct flight from Atlanta to Newark. The flight was cancelled, he was re-routed to Washington, D.C., where, after finally boarding at 3 a.m., crews were de-icing the wings. He arrived in Newark at 5 a.m.
“I’ve had a few of those,” he said. He has also had worse.
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His first year working games in the Big East, Vaszily had a Saturday game at Creighton University in Nebraska. Tip-off was 3 p.m. The next day he was scheduled to work a noon game at Connecticut. There were only two flights out of Omaha, at 5:30 and 6:30 p.m. However, both were scheduled for Denver, and, Vaszily points out, “as you know that’s going in the wrong direction.”
He had booked both flights in case he missed the 5:30. He made it, but from Denver the only flight that was scheduled to Newark was via Los Angeles. The flight from LAX took off at 11:30, a red eye straight to Jersey. Landing at 6 a.m., he then rented a car and drove to Hartford.
Said Vaszily, “I swore I’d never take five flights in 24 hours again.”
He’s also had long drives. One began in Indianapolis after a night game at Butler. The following day he had a noon game at Virginia Tech, some 450 miles away. Of course, that game would go into overtime.
If Vaszily had to drive to every assignment he would have to buy a new car every Easter.
Walking away from Wall Street
A bachelor, he works 90-100 games a year, not counting conference tournaments and NCAA games. He has worked nine straight Final Fours.
That’s a long way from his start blowing whistles. As a senior at the University of Scranton, he was handed a whistle and began a work-study program to referee intramurals. At least he knew the game, having played recreation and CYO and shooting around at school yards during summers. He realized early that he wasn’t a very good player, mostly by failing to hit baseline jumpers like his New York Knicks hero Bernard King.
After graduation he began refereeing girls’ games back in New York. He had taken floor tests, written tests and attended summer referee camps. He was off and running.
“But I never,” he said, “thought I’d be a career referee, that’s for sure.”
Working two jobs finally caught up to him, as he began to take days off after so many long trips. Eventually schedules began to force him take two days off a week.
“I couldn’t do it anymore,” he said. “I really wanted to focus on my officiating career, and I was able to walk away from my Wall Street job.”
'The student-athletes deserve our best'
As independent contractors, conferences pay officials a flat fee. And though each referee has to make their own traveling plans, there are agreements that additionally assist them financially.
There are 31 Division 1 conferences in the country. According to the NCAA, there are currently 789 referees registered in Division 1.
“The beginning of the season is like a jolt to the body,” Vaszily said. “But you get used to it. I try and get a nap when I get somewhere, even if it’s just an hour or two, because the student-athletes deserve our best.”
With more than 350 colleges offering women’s basketball, Vaszily estimates he’s been to about half those campuses. Many of course have big-time programs with sold-out boisterous crowds. Others have more cozy atmospheres.
He listed Louisville, UConn, Notre Dame, South Carolina, LSU, North Carolina State and UNC as among the loudest and most die-hard fans. Others, like Marquette and Creighton, are, in his words, “Cool places to work. Their fan base is strong. Seton Hall is a cool place to work as well.”
Every night is different, he noted. “You have to be ready for different styles of play, make split-second decisions, which I love to do, and you get to referee the best female athletes at the college level in the country.”
You also have to be in shape.
During the season he’s at the gym 3-4 days a week, doing some lifting, stretching and leg strengthening exercises, for about 30 minutes. And he’s drinking a lot of water. “Water is the No. 1 thing,” he said. “Water keeps you healthy.”
In the offseason he’s at the gym 5-6 days a week. When he’s not officiating camps or supervising clinics, you can often find him down the Jersey shore in Beach Haven. There, he leaves the whistles to lifeguards.
Paul Franklin is a freelance reporter for MyCentralJersey.com.
This article originally appeared on MyCentralJersey.com: March Madness: NCAA basketball official Joe Vaszily 'one of the best'
