Legendary Ref Gino D’Ippolito Honored as the Personality of the Month in Eastern New York
The Eastern New York Youth Soccer Association (ENYYSA) is very pleased to announce that Gino D’Ippolito is our Personality of the Month for April. Gino is the first person to be honored for his refereeing in the two years that Eastern New York has featured this award.
Gino officiated over 2,000 pro games and refereed international games in 29 countries. The world’s soccer stars in the late 1970s and early ‘80s, including the recently departed Johan Cruyff, all played in games refereed by Gino. The native of Colledimezzo, Italy has been a Yonkers resident since 1951 and he has always found the time to help Eastern New York and our Referee Program.
Gino explained how he became a ref. “I started refereeing in 1963 in Eastern New York. I was playing in a game and I was unhappy with the referee’s performance. After the game, I told the referee how I felt about his officiating. His response was, ‘If you think you could have done a better job, why don’t you become a referee yourself?’ So I did.”
Three months later, in November 1963, Gino was assigned as an assistant referee (then called linesman) for a local adult game. The referee and the other AR did not show up so Gino became the ref. His father and brother were both at that game yet he got scared and his father told him after the match that the players and fans called him all sorts of names. But Gino refereed the same two teams the following year and, this time, no one was complaining.
He fell in love with being a referee, and in the late 1960’s, he was assigned to the pros, with the old National Professional Soccer League (NPSL), a forerunner to the original North American Soccer League (NASL).
“There was a tryout for upcoming players. All the teams in the league were playing a pre-season tournament in a round-robin format all weekend long,” Gino said. “This was the place where the league could experiment with new referees. All the refs before me did 20 minutes on the line, 20 minutes as a referee, and so on. They told me to ref. After 20 minutes, they said, ‘Okay, your time is up, you’re done, thank you for coming.’ I thought, ‘Well, I gave it my best shot.’ ”
About a month later, Eddie Pearson called Gino to ref a pro game in Washington, DC. The rest is history as Gino advanced rapidly and made it onto the FIFA list in 1975.
Since then, he has refereed in virtually every s