Call of a lifetime: Pewaukee's Rolf looks ahead to officiating at Olympics

Pati Rolf will wake up one morning in Rio de Janeiro and have no idea if that's the day she'll get to make her dream come true.

A Pewaukee native with an endless volleyball resume, Rolf will get the job of a lifetime when she officiates in the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro. The invitation comes in Rolf's final chance at an Olympics, but when she first climbs into the official's stand, it will come mere hours after she learns her first assignment.

The late assignment helps to avoid putting officials in a position where they can be offered bribes, and the late notice also serves to keep the officials sharp. International officiating can be a strange business.

'The Olympic Games, you work hard to get there, but it is a lot of luck,' she said. 'I can't tell you the amount of luck involved. A disaster happens at a game, you're going to be in trouble, and those usually don't have anything to do with how good the official is. I've had great colleagues and incredible matches and everything went well. I looked at that letter in February (inviting me to the Olympics) and still couldn't believe it. Very few people are picked. There are phenomenal officials who aren't going and could go, and it's a matter of me just being lucky. I consider myself very fortunate.'

International competition doesn't necessarily operate within the same logic as American sports – consider that the mandatory retirement age is 55. That's why Rio will be the last shot for Rolf, 52.

'They really want to keep the group useful,' she said. 'There's no equal rights in the world bodies, no women's rights you can fall back on for this or that. You really have to fight and yet be extremely polite and work your way through with your personality. We have younger (officials) who are exceptional and would never get a chance otherwise (if refs were eligible forever).'

Event supervisors have been assessing her performance in the past decade-plus, evaluating her skills and interpersonal abilities at competitions all over the world.

Though she'll wake up each day in Rio unsure if that's her game day, she'll have to be on her game. Not only will these matches have the highest visibility in her career, but they'll also serve as the first Olympics usage of a challenge replay system, and Rolf is tasked with keeping matches on a tight schedule.

'I'm going there to bring my game in another level, my communication with friends and colleagues, and I really think you perform better if you're calm,' she said. 'Age helps me because I realize I'm at the end of my career. So I'm just going to have the best experience I can and be great for my colleagues. Hopefully, that serves me well.'

Well traveled

She's already had a lifetime of experiences and accolades. Certified by the Federation Internationale de Volleyball (FIVB), Rolf most recently officiated the Group 2 Grand Prix in Puerto Rico, the Pan American Games in Toronto, the U18 World Championships in Peru, the U20 World Championships in Puerto Rico and the World Cup in Japan.

Domestically, she's officiated a number of key events, including the first two rounds of the NCAA Division I tournament in Madison and the conference-championship tournaments in the Horizon League and Missouri Valley Conference. She was officiating games in the Big Ten before she turned 30 years old, and she chairs the USA Rules Commission and was elected the national ref representative on the Officials Commission.

She also has an upcoming appointment in Turkey, where she will officiate men's World League games in June. That's a big deal for Rolf.

'They are literally taking the best 20 refs in the world,' she said. 'In 2013, no more women were allowed to work men's games. But a month ago, the invitation to do World League games came, which is unheard of.'

She hopes it means women officials are being prepped to work men's games at the Olympics. Only four of the 20 selected officials for the Olympics are women. The line judges will all hail from the home country – Rolf herself had the chance to serve as a line judge in the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta, where a supervisor encouraged her to pursue the necessary steps to ref Olympic-level matches.

That led her to a training course in Tunisia, of all places.

'I was supposed to go to Bulgaria but the course closed, and the only other course was in Tunisia,' she said. 'I was the only female with about 10 Arabic gentlemen from other countries and 14 people from Europe. Three supervisors were all Arabic, one of which wasn't happy I was there. He was a strict Muslim. But it was the best thing that could have happened to me. Even now, I ran into one of them this year, and I said, 'I thought all you guys hated me,' and he said, 'No, we all loved you.' They literally weren't able to be friends with me at the time because of the culture.'

Her English tongue serves as a benefit – it's the mandatory language of the Women's Federation of Volleyball. Though many officials aren't fluent, all speak some level of English, and when she attends events in foreign countries where most meetings are held in different languages, she's good enough friends with her colleagues to glean the info she needs.

'Two years ago in Italy at the World Championships … we had four languages spoken at the same time at the dinner table,' Rolf said. 'But nobody cares. How lucky can I be to be with that group of colleagues?'

Accomplished coach

Rolf was coaching college volleyball as recently as 2012 at East Carolina, but she and the program mutually agreed to part ways thereafter, and she was able to return home to her husband and two kids, who stayed in Milwaukee. Prior to East Carolina, Rolf's Marquette teams went 103-101 in seven seasons, and she also coached for 14 seasons at Minnesota-Duluth. For her performance as a volleyball player herself, she was elected into the North Dakota State Athletics Hall of Fame.

But coming back home allowed her to shift her focus to officiating full-time. It's a move that ironically put her on a lot of international flights, not that she's complaining.

Pictured: Japan's Sarina Koga spikes the ball as Pewaukee resident Pati Rolf looks on from the referee's perch at a women's World Cup match in Japan last June. Rolf's biggest assignment, a spot in the Olympic Games, will arrive in August.