Outdoor games ‘phenomenal’ for more than just players: Big Ten officials thrilled for assignments at Wrigley Field

CHICAGO — Like thousands have before, Barry Pochmara walked down the tunnel from the umpires’ room at Wrigley Field, climbed up the visiting dugout steps and saw his jersey number in white numbers atop the antique scoreboard in center field.

It’s not something that a hockey referee gets to experience often.

“That was phenomenal to have our numbers up there on a probably 100-year-old scoreboard,” Pochmara said. “You get excited for all that kind of stuff and it makes you really not take for granted working these games.”

Players and coaches get amped for outdoor games that bring back memories of skating on frozen ponds. It was no different for the officials who worked at the Big Ten’s Frozen Confines series of games.

“Everybody wants to be part of these outdoor games,” referee Colin Kronforst said. “They typically involve rivalries, which makes it an even bigger event. It’s just as fun for us as it is for them.”

Pochmara and Kronforst worked the first of four college games at Wrigley, Friday’s 4-3 Ohio State victory against Michigan, along with linesmen John “JP” Waleski and Pat Richardson. Afterward, they beamed about what they saw, what they felt and what they heard.

The goose bumps that Waleski described weren’t even because the temperature was 24 at opening faceoff and a wind from left field to right field knocked the wind chill into the single digits at times.

“It’s not like looking up into the crowd at a regular game,” Waleski said. “You look up, A, it’s Wrigley. And it’s dark, and you can tell there’s a ton of people up there and you just hear the noise.

“It’s a feeling that I don’t really know how to describe. NHL guys say it’s like being a kid on the pond again, and it definitely has that feel. It takes you back to this is a game, this is fun.”

The officials wore balaclavas under their helmets to try to keep their heads warm but they left their hands uncovered.

By the game’s end, Pochmara said his toes were getting cold.

“You don’t fully warm up in between” periods, he said. “So every time you went back out, I was a little bit colder.”

Pochmara and Kronforst each said they had officiated four outdoor games before Friday. Pochmara did two at the Great Lakes Invitational when it was Detroit’s Comerica Park in 2013 and one earlier that year at Chicago’s Soldier Field.

Kronforst and Pochmara also worked a 2015 game between Michigan and Michigan State at Soldier Field.

“This was a bigger event,” Pochmara said. “To me, a much more prestigious venue. Because the NHL put this one on, the other four were not NHL-ran as far as the ice surface and the boards and the lights and everything else. This was, by far, the most well-operated machine out of my five that I’ve done.”

Kronforst was a referee for the 2019 game at Notre Dame Stadium between the Fighting Irish and Michigan, which also followed an NHL Winter Classic.

“The branding there wasn’t even close to what this was,” Kronforst said. “The perception from TV, the perception from the officials, the perception from the coaches and the players, it was a much bigger event, in my opinion.”

The officials called eight penalties Friday and had three reviews, none of which led to a change in the original call.

Kronforst said there was a welcome relationship between the quality of ice deteriorating and him getting fatigued as the game went on. The game got more deliberate as the energy level decreased.

“Sometimes it’s a more violent game because it’s not very well organized and it’s throw it at the net and see what happens type of hockey, which is fun too,” Kronforst said.

Adding weather to hockey creates new challenges.

“It’s a different mindset for the players and the officials when you have the elements that we did,” Pochmara said. “It’s not super crisp. It’s not super fast. Nobody’s dangling for a backhand one-timer.”

There weren’t those kind of memories from Wrigley Field but there were a lot of other positive takeaways for the officials.