AUBURN – While those attending Sunday’s Auburn-Lewiston Sports Hall of Fame were reminiscing about some of the great moments in local sports history, a man who was in the middle of many of those memories was not far from the thoughts of some.

Mike DiRenzo, Edward Little High School graduate, long-time guidance counselor, coach and basketball official, died Thursday at 85. A member of the Auburn-Lewiston Sports Hall of Fame, DiRenzo officiated over 1,500 high school and college basketball games in a 28-year career.

“Mike was an outstanding official,” said former Lewiston High School basketball coach and athletic director Fern Masse. “He was the type of official that if you had a problem, you knew you could talk to him and wouldn’t get a technical foul. He would listen to you and let you have your say. But he was still the boss. He was the head man out there and I had a lot of respect for him for that.”

“He was a very well-respected official,” Masse said. “For a while, when we were in the tournament, it seemed like he was doing a lot of our games, and he kept telling me the reason we were winning was because he took care of us. I don’t know that I agreed with that. But he was a great official, a great person.”

DiRenzo was a guidance counselor at Edward Little when one of Sunday’s Hall of Fame inductees, John White, was a student and later a teacher, coach and athletic director there.

“He probably was one of the most prominent basketball officials around the state,” White said. “Having become a basketball official later in life, I certainly appreciated all of the insight and help I got from Mike and certainly enjoyed the time we worked together at the high school. He was a down-to-earth guy who was willing to help anybody improve as an official or as a person.”

Before putting on the referee stripes, DiRenzo coached varsity basketball at Rockland High School, where he helped a young Masse get his start in coaching.

“I coached at the middle school level while he was the head basketball coach,” Masse said. “He really got me started, and then I moved back (to Lewiston) and he caught up with me at Edward Little.”

DiRenzo served as commissioner of Maine Interscholastic Basketball for 12 years and in 1977, the Mike DiRenzo Award was established in his honor and is handed out annually to the outstanding player in the Western Class B girls basketball tournament.