YORKTON – It was a homecoming of sorts for Tarrington Wyonzek when he took to the Westland Insurance Arena ice Thursday.
“It’s probably been four years I was involved in a SJ (Saskatchewan Junior) game here,” he said. “It’s cool. I’ll have a lot of family and friends at the game tonight.”
For the linesman it was very much a return to his roots.
“It’s where I started reffing, here in Yorkton when I was 11-years-old.”
Back then Wyonzek said he started wearing the stripes for the most basic reason – money.
“I had a paper route,” he recalled, adding his parents (Pat and Karen Wyonzek), had really driven home the point he had to make money if he wanted things like a car when he turned 16.
So when Garry Gawryliuk suggested reffing, he said yes, noting he attended his first officiating clinic at the Gallagher Centre.
So officiating made Wyonzek some cash as a youth, but what was it about it that kept him doing it as an eventual career?
“I think I just liked the challenge of going out there and doing something different,” he said, adding he found “officiating was sort of a different way of seeing things.”
Wyonzek said things are always changing in a game, and officiating teaches one how to deal with those changes and the players involved. Those are skills that transfer off the ice, he added.
“There’s a lot of valuable life lessons,” said Wyonzek.
And officiating kept Wyonzek in the game when his skills as a player didn’t look like they would.
“I loved playing hockey,” he said, explaining he played minor hockey in Yorkton until his final two years took him to Canora.
At about age 16 Wyonzek he said he came to realize “hockey probably wasn’t going to get me anywhere past minor hockey.”
But officiating might.
Wyonzek said in stripes he had aspirations of making the NHL, but after several years he realized “that wasn’t going to happen.”
This time though there other avenues to high level success.
Wyonzek said he focused “on the international side and getting some experience there.”
In the ensuing years Wyonzek gained that experience as a linesman at a number of high profile international events including the U18, U20 and men’s world championships.
Then a few weeks ago he learned he had been chosen to officiate at the highest level of international hockey – the 2026 Winter Olympics being held in Milan and Cortina d'Ampezzo, Italy.
Wyonzek said after the 2022 Olympics the International Ice Hockey Federation created a list of 32 amateur officials to track toward the best being selected for the 2026 Games. Normally 26 would have been selected but with the NHL again sending players they will also send 13 officials.
“The pond shrunk in half,” said Wyonzek, adding that made things “. . . Very competitive over the last four years.”
The selections were made via Zoom calls, with hopefuls given the Yay or Nay.
“I was one of the last Zoom calls to come,” said Wyonzek, adding when they told him he was going “I kind of teared up a little bit.”
When he told his wife more tears came.
“Tears of joy. Tears of happiness,” said Wyonzek.
Wyonzek is the only Canadian linesman to make it on the men’s side, and one of only two Canadians – the other being referee Mike Campbell from B.C.
Wyonzek said the Olympics will be the pinnacle of his officiating career.
“This will be the top of my officiating career for sure. . . This will be insane, a completely different level,” he said, adding the World Championships have been high level hockey “but the Olympics will be better. . .This will be best-on-best.”
