Cleo Robinson thought his first day of being a high school basketball official would be his last.
The year was 1978 and Robinson and was only 31 and working as a juvenile probation officer when his close friend Lorenzo Cotton talked him into officiating.
“There was a coach from Amphi (High School) and every time I turned around, he was yelling something,” Robinson recalled of his first game as a ref. “I just paid, I think it was 25 bucks for the shoes, 18 bucks for the pants, and Lorenzo sold me the (referee) shirt for five bucks.
“I said to myself, ‘I’m just going to work long enough to get my money back for these things, and then I’m quitting.’ That was my thought — this is not for me.”
Some 47 years later, Robinson officiated his last game at the high school varsity level on Tuesday night.
Cleo Robinson, who started his officiating career in 1978, is working his last game at the high school level tonight in the Sunnyside-Pueblo Open Division game at Pueblo. Cleo, Bijan Robinson’s grandfather who was a father figure to Bijan when the younger Robinson was growing up,… pic.twitter.com/bxB579sD0g
— Javier Morales (@JavierJMorales) February 19, 2025
I interviewed Robinson, grandfather of Bijan Robinson, in the small referee quarters at Pueblo High School’s gym along with two other officials — Blue Colegrove and Kurt Stack — who worked the Sunnyside-Pueblo girls Open Division first-round game.
“Cleo Robinson was a mentor of mine when I started refereeing at the Y back in the early 90s,” Colegrove said. “He worked my first varsity game with me.”
Colegrove and Stack offered congratulations to Robinson at midcourt before Robinson made the jump-ball toss.
Legendary Dale Lopez, in the Pima County Sports Hall of Fame along with Robinson, made the announcement as the public-address announcer to the large crowd at Pueblo regarding Robinson finishing his varsity officiating career.
Members of both teams and coaching staffs and the fans gave Robinson a loud round of applause.
“I’m just at that point where you know it has to happen,” Robinson said of his decision to conclude his officiating career at the varsity level. “I’m still enjoying it, having fun, but you reach that age and you think, ‘You know, maybe now is the time to go.’
“I want to try to go out when I feel that I’m calling a decent game. I don’t want to go out and have people say, ‘Can you believe Cleo is making those calls?’ or anything like that. It’s just one of the things where I thought about it and said, ‘Now is the time.'”
Robinson mentioned he is not entirely finished with officiating. He said he will continue to work middle-school games.
His willingness to continue to work games away from the spotlight with Tucson’s youngest athletes demonstrates his humble characteristic and why he was such a positive influence on Bijan when he raised him as a father figure.
Cleo, a standout athlete for Marana’s football and track and field teams in the early 1960s, has a storied history of officiating after concluding his athletic career in track and field at NAU.
The same year he started officiating in 1978, when he thought he did not want to continue because of the unpleasant experience with the Amphi coach, he was selected to officiate the state championship games in football and boys and girls basketball.
In 1983, he was appointed to work Pac-10 football games and Big Sky basketball games, making him the only Arizona official working NCAA Division 1 games as a referee in two sports. He advanced from high school directly to Pac 10 football and also officiated junior college football and basketball games in Arizona.
He was a field official for 26 years with the Pac-10 and concluded his career at the college level as an instant-replay official. As a field official, he earned assignments to 19 postseason bowl games, including three BCS bowl games.
The late Cotton, who passed away in 2022, sparked Robinson’s interest in officiating. Cotton officiated at the high school and college levels for more than 30 years until 2002.
“The meeting place for high school sports for officials was three or four blocks from where my apartment was, and Lorenzo would come over there before he went to the meetings,” Cleo recalled. “He always tried to talk me into becoming an official. And I said, ‘No, no, no.’ Then I finally said, ‘Okay, I’ll go to a meeting with you.’
“I kind of enjoyed what they were learning, the rules and so forth, so I decided to give it a try.”
Stack worked his first college basketball game with Cleo and Cotton at Cochise College in the 1996-97 season.
Stack remembered working a college basketball game with Cleo after the famous “Bush Push” play involving Reggie Bush pushing Matt Leinart into the end zone for the game-winning touchdown for USC at Notre Dame in the 2005 season. The play was illegal at the time. The elder Robinson was a line judge for that game.
Cleo has a Sports Illustrated photo of him with that play hanging from a wall in his house.
“I joked with him, ‘Hey, I saw you standing there, letting the Bush Push go,'” Stack said with a laugh. “That was one of the most famous college plays of that year. It was always entertaining to listen to Cleo tell stories.”
The elder Robinson interjected with a laugh: “Where I lived, I would go running or be working out, and people would pull up in a car and say, ‘You blew it, Cleo! Great call, Cleo!'”
Robinson officiated the Sunnyside-Pueblo game the same valor and professionalism that he has shown over his six decades of service as an official.
When the game came to an end, Robinson walked off the court waving to family, friends and fans he did not personally know.
“It’s sort of sad, knowing that part of your life is coming to a close,” he said. “But I have to really be open about it and realize that I’m doing the right thing.”
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ALLSPORTSTUCSON.com publisher, writer and editor Javier Morales is a former Arizona Press Club award winner. He is a former Arizona Daily Star beat reporter for the Arizona basketball team, including when the Wildcats won the 1996-97 NCAA title. He has also written articles for CollegeAD.com, Bleacher Report, Lindy’s Sports, TucsonCitizen.com, The Arizona Republic, Sporting News and Baseball America, among many other publications. He has also authored the book “The Highest Form of Living”, which is available at Amazon. He became an educator in 2016 and is presently a special education teacher at Sunnyside High School in the Sunnyside Unified School District.
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