THE FRONT ROW with MARK NELKE: Longtime football official Roger Stewart is getting noticed — and for all the right reasons

A much-younger Roger Stewart described himself as “highly competitive” and “always running my mouth” when he was playing and coaching as part of the local sports scene shortly after arriving in Coeur d’Alene in 1979. 

One day a veteran official, Dan Malcolm, pulled Stewart aside and suggested he become a referee. 

“I hate refs,” Stewart told him. 

“You need to get yelled at,” Malcolm told him. 

Stewart’s first officiating assignment was a freshman football game at Sandpoint. 

“And by Week 3 I was hooked,” he recalled. 

"I learned a lot of life lessons in officiating,” Stewart said. “I learned how to manage people. I learned how to manage my own emotions. I learned things about focus ... and as I worked my way up the ladder, I have friends at all levels of football, all across the country, and these are people that I would have never even met.” 

MORE THAN 40 years later, Roger Stewart, who once hated refs as a young adult, is going to be honored for his many contributions as a football official — as a referee, but also for passing along his knowledge to younger officials. 

Stewart, 66, will be inducted into the North Idaho Athletic Hall of Fame on Saturday at the North Idaho Sports Banquet at The Coeur d’Alene Resort. 

Stewart got the call recently from Rick Rasmussen, chairman of the North Idaho Athletic Hall of Fame, telling him the votes were in, and he was going to be inducted. 

“What?” Stewart replied. “I’m a referee.” 

“Have you looked at your resume?” Rasmussen told him. 

“It’s really weird,” Stewart said. “We have the adage that the best game you work is the one where nobody knows you’re there. So even though officials get noticed, a lot of time it’s for the wrong reason.”

LET’S LOOK at Roger Stewart’s resume.  

He’s worked more than 40 years as a football official at the high school, college and professional level. He worked 12 years in the Arena Football League, including the 2016 Arena Bowl. 

He started working NCAA games in 1995, and has worked games at the Division I, II and III levels, including 234 games in the Big Sky Conference. He worked three I-AA/FCS national semifinals. 

At the high school level, he’s worked five state championship games. He’s in the North Idaho Officials Association Hall of Fame. 

And while Stewart is proud of all of that, he might be even more proud of the work he and others have done training and mentoring young officials in recent years. 

In addition to working with local high school refs, he’s the assistant coordinator for football officials in the Frontier Conference, and lead trainer for the Northwest Intercollegiate Football Officials Association. 

“For me, it’s kind of giving back to the community,” Stewart said.  

“We’ve got quite a group on the football side. Steve Hudson ...  retired. Steve Currie’s in the ACC. Shane Anderson retired from the Pac two years ago. I’m still in the Big Sky. Bob Burton is a replay official in his 12th year. We’ve got Josh Behrens, in his sixth year in the Big Sky. Brandon Litalien worked a Big Sky game last year ... and we’ve got seven other guys that are working in the Frontier Conference.” 

He admits having “a little bit of a chip on my shoulder” to prove to the rest of the state, and the country, that yes, high-quality officials can be produced from lil’ ol’ North Idaho. 

Stewart mentioned an officiating clinic for high school officials coming up in June. An NFL referee is coming in to instruct. So are refs with experience in the ACC, Pac-12 and Big Sky. 

“That’s pretty rare in a town this size,” Stewart said. “I have no ego about officiating, but I have a little bit of an ego about representing North Idaho.” 

He and Patty, his wife of 43 years, coached youth softball and basketball for many years are the owners of Allegra of Coeur d’Alene, a regional marketing and printing business. 

He said Patty often asks him why he puts so much time into all this training. 

“I have a passion for it,” Stewart said. “And I take a lot of pride in it, and I’m very happy and proud of the progress that a lot of the officials have made.” 

YEARS AGO, Jim Kravik, who preceded Stewart as District 1 football commissioner, introduced some training for officials. Dan Malcolm was working in the Big Sky at the time. 

"But we didn’t have access to video, and a lot of the technology we have now,” Stewart said. 

In the early 1990s, a man named Al Wise “just started showing up” at high school football games in North Idaho, telling the local refs he was a former NFL official, Stewart said.  

“He would show up at games with a notepad, and he would give us half-hour postgame evaluations, and it was evaluations that we’d never had before,” Stewart recalled. “It was kind of unnerving to some people, but some of us liked it.” 

Wise told the North Idaho refs they were good enough to work in the Pac-12, in Division I, even the NFL.  

Shortly thereafter, the Spokane College Football Officials Association, which consisted of mostly Pac-10 and Big Sky refs, invited Hudson to join. Stewart came in a couple years later. Then Shane Anderson. Then Steve Currie. 

Around 2010, Kravik asked Stewart if he would start running clinics for local high school officials, since he had access to all this NCAA-level training. 

“About that time, Shane, Currie and I got hired by the Arena Football League, which was being run by the NFL at the time, so we had direct NFL training,” Stewart said. “So we started giving back. It’s not just me; I’m kind of the ringleader.” 

With all that officiating experience in North Idaho, they are able to offer training locally that some folks pay thousands of dollars to learn elsewhere.  

“When you have Steve Hudson, who is a Hall of Famer, at one time maybe THE best back judge in the country, and you’ve got Steve Currie, who’s working championship games ... he worked Florida State-Miami last year, you’re getting in rarefied air,” Stewart said. “For me, and I’ve had a great career, but I’m more of an organizer, and we bring in great people that are really good, and we have just built a culture that may not be evident on some Friday nights, but overall, you can really see it when you compare what our guys do, compared to other states or districts. I’m pretty proud of everybody.” 

STEWART MOVED to Coeur d’Alene in 1979 at age 19 after playing football and baseball in California, at Santa Paula Union High, then at Ventura Junior College. 

An offensive lineman, he planned to play football at the University of Idaho, until a shoulder injury derailed that plan. At the time, his parents were looking to get out of California, and fell in love with North Idaho after a visit here. Roger came up for a visit and decided not to go to school at Idaho, but decided to move to the area anyway. His family joined him a few months later. 

In the early days, Stewart recalled when he and Hudson and Anderson and Currie were working small-college games in the Northwest. Often they would work a high school game in North Idaho on a Friday night, get up at 4 the next morning, drive to La Grande, Ore., work a game and get home at midnight. 

Stewart worked several Pac-10 and Pac-12 games over the years. After 23 years on the field working Big Sky games, and following a “minor heart issue” late last fall which caused him to miss the last few weeks of the season, Stewart is moving upstairs this fall, as a replay official for the conference. 

“When I had to come off the field this past season, every coach in the conference sought me out, with very kind words,” Stewart said. “It was actually very humbling, and unexpected.” 

STORIES? 

Stewart said he’s not a big anecdote guy, but ... 

"Steve Hudson and I had a game in Kellogg one year, a Wallace-Kellogg game, and it was about 15 degrees in late September,” Stewart recalled. “Bob Jones was the coach at Wallace. He got upset during a play and he came out on the field and he’s yelling at us, and it was so cold the glue in his dentures froze, and he expectorated his dentures right out in the middle of the field. And he never broke stride; he picked them up and just kept yelling.  

“I laughed hard ... and it turns out he wasn’t even mad at us. He was mad at one of his kids, and he wanted to know what the kid had said.” 

Stewart remembered a bucket-list game — in the Rose Bowl, in 2009, UCLA vs. San Diego State. 

“Steve Currie and Shane Anderson and I were on the same Arena League crew for six years,” Stewart said. “Bob Burton (as the replay guy) and I have been on the same Big Sky crew the last four years. Josh Behrens, his first Big Sky game was at Idaho on a crew with me. Those are the memories I have.” 

He said he’ll miss working a Weber State football game in Ogden, and "the Samoan kids at Weber State inviting me over for roast pig after the game.” 

THESE DAYS, in addition to supervising local high school officials, Stewart conducts training for refs in the Frontier and Northwest conferences. 

But he says his “true, give-back passion” is working with high school officials, helping create easier opportunites for them to advance, compared to back when he was getting started. 

"Arena (football) taught me a lot about officiating,” Stewart said. “Arena is like NASCAR meets world wrestling. The fans are different. It is crazy wide open. I was in the glory years when we were traveling all over the country — going to Tampa, Philadelphia, New Orleans, Phoenix ... full NBA arenas.  

“But in all seriousness, there is no better officiating gig than working football in the Big Sky Conference. You can work in the ACC, and you’re traveling to the other side of the country, and you’re working big crowds. But it’s not the same. It’s a little more corporate, if you will, the attitudes are different. The Big Sky is still just a tremendous football conference, but from an officiating perspective, I’m working with guys that are on their way to the NFL, on their way to the Pac-12, or Big 12. I’ve have three umpires that I’ve had a good hand in mentoring who are all working at levels above me now. All been hired into the Pac, or Mountain West, or Big 12. That’s a big source of pride for me.” 

And then there are the towns. 

"You’ve been to Missoula,” Stewart said. “What is more fun than going to a Cat-Griz game in Missoula, or Bozeman? It’s pretty special.” 

JUST DON’T try to watch a football game with Stewart. Or other refs. 

“We’re sick,” he said. “We’re not fans. Fans watch the ball. The ball goes in the air, all the heads go up and watch the ball.  

“There’s nothing to look at. We know where the ball’s at. I’m looking at what’s going on with the left tackle. Even when I’m spectating, I’ll tell Patty, ‘did you see that cheap shot?’  

‘What are you talking about?’ 

‘Look at the linebacker — the linebacker just (picked) off the receiver coming over the middle.’” 

Roger and Patty went down to Las Vegas to watch the West Coast Conference basketball tournaments, “and I’m looking at high screens on the back-side cuts,” he said. “I don’t even know what the point guard’s doing, coming up the right side. Yeah, it’s sick.” 

He’s appreciative of his mentors — guys like Chuck McPhail, Chuck Maines, Dan Malcolm, Dave Corbeill, Bud Koski — and enjoys passing on what he learned from them to the next generation of officials. 

THEN, TALKING about the impact his wife, Patty, and their three daughters — Natalie, Nicole and Taylor — have had on his career, Roger Stewart got emotional. 

“I couldn’t do any of this ... I can’t do anything that I’ve done in the last 40 years without the support of Patty, and my daughters,” Stewart said. “Because all of this that I’ve done affected them in some way. It means I wasn’t there at times, and I worked very hard to be there. I followed Natalie all over the country (when she played volleyball), then traveled all night to get to where I was going. I couldn’t do this without family support. 

“Patty, we would go on car trips, and she would be quizzing me (about officiating calls),” Roger said. “We'd drive to Bozeman, and all the way over there she’d be reading me the test questions of the week. She’s done that for 40 years. You can’t do this without that kind of support.” 

Mark Nelke is sports editor of The Press. He can be reached at 208-664-8176, Ext. 1205, or via email at [email protected]. Follow him on X (formerly Twitter) @CdAPressSports. 

    Courtesy photo Roger Stewart with grandchildren Gabe, left, and Ellie before working an Idaho Vandals football game at the Kibbie Dome in Moscow.

    Courtesy photo Roger Stewart working Arena Bowl 2016, Arizona vs. Philadelphia.
  

    Courtesy photo "Fans watch the ball," says official Roger Stewart, here watching the action among the linemen during a Montana football game in Missoula.