IBCA Roy Gardner Award: Mark Baltz
Mark Baltz has been a boys basketball
official for 44 years, a college women’s
basketball official for nine years and will be
entering his 23rd season as an NFL head
linesman in 2011.
Baltz began officiating in 1966-67 while a
student at Ohio University, and 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. For the NFL,
he has called 19 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 semistate and 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.
