Where are they now?

Growing up on the West side of Indianapolis, Jimmy Dimitroff desperately wanted to be a basketball player. Only one thing held him back...talent. So when he realized he wasn't going to make it as a member of the Washington High School Continentals basketball squad, a coach tossed him a whistle and told him to start refereeing intra-squad scrimmages. A career was born. Dimitroff ended up spending a lifetime in the game as an official. And not just any official, but one of the best in state high school history. By the time he was 22, he was assigned to his first sectional, in 1953. It was the first of 35 he would work. His list would eventually include 30 regionals, 23 semistates and five state finals. Overall, Dimitroff estimates he refereed more than 8,000 games, including college games in the old Hoosier Conference and the Midwestern Collegiate Conference (now the Horizon League). Both major conferences and the pros tried to lure him away, but Dimitroff couldn't pull himself away from his two loves: his family, and Indiana high school basketball. "High school (officials) don't get much credit or money, and they're gone all the time," says Dimitroff, 77. "But I had a great career, I met so many nice people and I'd do it all again for nothing." Dimitroff is right, the work of high school officials, in any sport, is almost always taken for granted, unless they botch a call, of course. In basketball, the Indiana Hall of Fame didn't recognize officials until 2002, when it instituted the Center Circle Officials Award. No surprise, Dimitroff was one of the first two recipients, Roger DeYoung the other. Now Dimitroff wants to do something more. On Aug. 23 at the Hall of Fame in New Castle, he arranged a reception to recognize any official who has worked either a boys or girls state finals "as well as all basketball officials." The event, dubbed "Saluting the Stripes and Whistles," included a tour of the Hall, a luncheon and a program. "If nothing else, I just want them to get together and tell stories," Dimitroff says. Dimitroff can be counted upon to tell a few of his own. Like the time he brought his mother, Alexandria, to Hinkle Fieldhouse to watch him officiate a state championship game. "The place was jammed and my mother, who had never been in a building bigger than a Kroger, was sitting in the front row," Dimitroff recalls. "Well, I'd made a call and the crowd was all over me and I was sweating. A timeout came and my mom got up from her seat and wiped my forehead with her lace hankie. All I heard the rest of the game was, 'Go see your Mommy!' " There was another game when students sitting in the front row were shouting racial epithets at African-American players. Dimitroff stopped the game and told the athletic director, "You either get them out of here or I'm stopping the game. The A.D. said, 'You can't do that.' And I said, 'See this basketball? It's leaving, and so am I.' " Within moments, the students were shown the door. Still, Dimitroff says, "those were good days. People have a right to holler (at officials). But they don't have a right to abuse them. These days, fans are crazy." Dimitroff credits his wife of 53 years, Elaine, for raising their four children while he criss-crossed the state. When they're not vacationing in Florida, they still live on Indy's Northwest side. And Jimmy still mentors young officials. "I gave a lot of my life to high school basketball," he says. "But that's because I really loved it." -