He Makes the Calls--His Way

VAN NUYS —  With time running out in last Friday’s football game at Birmingham High, the officials gathered near midfield for a conference. They wanted to remind one another to watch for a Hail Mary pass.

Before speaking, though, they waited for a young woman to run onto the field. An interpreter, she was on hand to translate their words into sign language because the back judge is deaf.

Roy Lopaty is something of a rarity. The Reseda man is among only 20 or so deaf officials working high school and college football games nationwide, according to the American Athletic Assn. of the Deaf. But he is also a fixture on the local scene, having called games throughout Los Angeles for 16 years.

“Roy’s a dedicated official,” says Lee Joseph, a City Section administrator. “Very intense, very knowledgeable.”

The communication gap that can exist between the deaf and the hearing is not readily evident when Lopaty is on the football field. Verbal communication takes a backseat to the din of the crowd and marching bands. Officials practice their own form of sign language, punctuating each play by waving their arms and using a series of hand signals.

“It sounds funny, but we do use gestures like sign language,” Lopaty says. “The other officials know how to communicate with me.”

Lopaty, a slight man with graying hair and a quiet manner, lost most of his hearing at the age of 7 months, when he contracted spinal meningitis. Now 49, he speaks clearly and reads lips well enough to talk one-on-one but needs assistance in group situations.

So he arrives at each game with two interpreters in tow. Beth D’Addario and Norma Villegas accompany him to often-cramped officials’ locker rooms for pregame instructions.

While the referee--who heads the crew--reviews tricky situations such as onside kicks and intentional grounding, D’Addario and Villegas take turns relaying each word in American Sign Language. Because football involves technical terms, certain signs must be adapted.

A flick of the thumb, for instance, signifies the coin toss. “It’s

not really a sign,” Villegas said. “It just looks like tossing a coin.” The sign for “cheat” is used for penalties. “Steal” means “interception.”

Lopaty’s colleagues are, for the most part, accustomed to having the two women around. The officials tend to speak a little more slowly and clearly when addressing Lopaty, occasionally glancing at the interpreters to ensure they are understood. Says Alvin Inge, the referee at the El Camino Real-Birmingham game: “We’re a team. We work together.”

On the field, Lopaty can hear whistles and loud noises. He almost always works as a back judge, which limits the need to talk to players and coaches. From his position in the defensive backfield, he can keep all the action in front of him.

“He knows what’s going on,” Joseph said. “At other spots, he could get buried.”

Before each play, Lopaty receives a signal from the referee to start the 25-second play clock. He then counts to be sure that the defensive team has the proper number of players on the field. After the snap, the back judge has the highly visible, and often controversial, job of calling pass-interference penalties.

Being deaf occasionally spares him some grief.

“When the coaches yell at me,” he says, “I can ignore them.”

In fact, his conversations are generally confined to timeouts, when the officiating crew huddles to discuss upcoming situations. That is when D’Addario and Villegas rush in.

The women volunteer to work with Lopaty so they can gain experience as interpreters. They do not always comprehend the terminology they are translating and are definitely not big fans of the game.

“I hate it,” D’Addario says.

A few weeks ago, at a game in Pasadena, she was unintentionally kicked by a cheerleader. “A really hefty cheerleader. I was black and blue,” she recalls. Last Friday, she and Villegas were set upon by a school administrator who tried to shoo them away from the sidelines. A worried Lopaty signed to them from the field.

“Who’s the [jerk]?” he asked.

The two women are learning to keep out of harm’s way. At the same game that D’Addario sustained her injury, Blair Coach Profirio Frausto didn’t even realize she was on the sidelines. Nor did he notice anything extraordinary about the back judge that night.

“We noticed that he might have been blind,” the coach says, laughing. “No, we thought he called a very fair game.”

The head football coach at Gallaudet University, a prominent school for the deaf in Washington, D.C., wonders why there aren’t more deaf officials. Rich Pelletier, who is deaf himself, says: “If I wasn’t a coach, that’s what I would do.”

Next year, the American Athletic Assn. of the Deaf will begin a program to train more deaf people to officiate. At present, an esti

mated 100 deaf men and women work as referees and umpires in football, basketball, softball and soccer. Probably the best-known is Guy T. Kirk of Concord, N.C., who calls Southeastern Conference basketball games.

“In general, deaf people do a good job of officiating,” said Larry Fleischer, president of the association and chairman of the deaf studies program at Cal State Northridge. “It’s very visual. They can concentrate on the game.”

Lopaty does not see any significant advantages or disadvantages to being deaf. He prefers to discuss what he can do, as opposed to what he cannot.

With a month of football to go, he is already looking forward to next year when he will officiate college scrimmages in hopes of advancing to the next level. There is also the upcoming high school basketball season.

“It’s fun for me,” he says. “I enjoy the teamwork. I just love the games.”