Next Woman Up: Robin DeLorenzo, NFL official

How did you get your start as an official?

My father, Rich DeLorenzo, had been an official for our high school chapter in New Jersey for 15 years at the time I graduated college. He was one of the teachers in the class for aspiring officials. I was living with my parents and he asked me if I wanted to come to the class, listen in and talk football. I thought I was just going to hang out with my dad, but about five minutes into that class, I looked over at my dad and asked, “Wait, can I do this?” He replied, “I don’t see why not.” This was about 21 years ago now, and there were no women officiating the game, so frankly, I didn’t know if I was even allowed to do it.

There were about 19 of us in the class who ended up taking the test — all men, of course. They treated me well, and I just fell in love with officiating. I foolishly thought I was going to walk onto my dad’s crew because he was a referee, the leader of the officiating crew. He said, “No, you don’t know what you’re doing yet. You need to learn.” He was right, and it took him four years to accept me on his crew. I worked high school football for 14 years, and for 10 of those years, I worked on my dad’s crew. Working with him was one of the main reasons I didn’t move to college football so quickly; nothing was going to beat working with him.

That is great. Did you have another job at that time? And when did you transition to officiating full-time?

I had many jobs. I was a teacher’s assistant, ran background checks and fingerprints for TSA PreCheck, was a bartender and so many other things. I eventually chose football over everything else. I knew I wasn’t willing to give up officiating games for any reason. I am a big competitor and all I’ve ever wanted to be is the very best at the level I was at, just to get to the next level, whether that was junior college, Division III, Division II, Division I and so on. I never looked more than one step up, and honestly, I never dreamed of working in the NFL — never, not once.

After 11 years of working high school football, I went to college officiating, starting with JUCO and then Division III. I could still work high school games during that time, so I did. When I was promoted to Division II football, I was still able to do high school. Once I got to the Division I Football Championship Subdivision level, I had to retire from high school football because I had to be at the college game site the night before. So, after 14 years of being a high school official, I retired from it in the same game as my dad. It was really special. And as it turns out, we had an opening in our crew that night, and my fiancé, Tom Lezak, just happened to work the position that was open, so he worked that game, too. It was extremely special and a big sendoff for us in our own minds.