Congratulations to the Roy Gardner Award Winner: Mark Baltz
Mark Baltz has been a boys basketball official for 44 years, a college women's basketball official for nine years and enters his 23rd season as an NFL head linesman in 2011.
Baltz began officiating in 1966-67 while a student at Ohio University, and he worked games in central Ohio for four years prior to moving to Indiana in January 1971. He officiated high school football until 1983, including IHSAA championship games in 1978 and 1983. He then worked as a football official from 1984-88 in the Big Ten and Mid-American conferences before being selected as an NFL official for the 1989 season. He has called 19 NFL postseason games, including five conference championship games. He also worked for NFL Europe for three seasons.
He has continued to work high school boys basketball over the years, calling 37 sectionals, 25 regionals, eight semistates and state championship games in 1999, 2003 and 2006. He was selected as Indiana’s Basketball Official of the Year in 2004-05 by the IHSAA and the National Federation Officials Association.
Baltz has been a member of the Indiana Officials Association since 1988, a member of the National Football League Referees Association since 1999 and a member of the Indiana Football Officials Association since 2001. He was inducted into the Indiana Football Hall of Fame in 2006 and became the first recipient of the Indiana Chapter of the National Football Foundation’s Football Official Award in February 2007. He also serves as an associate director for the Indiana Basketball Hall of Fame.
