Boston College Athletics
Alumni Spotlight: Rita Roach
June 08, 2015 | Women's Basketball
By Reid Oslin
Former Boston College women's basketball player Rita Roach `86 always makes the right call.
Well, almost always.
Roach, the former Eagle point guard who played a big part in BC's emergence as a top-level competitor in women's college basketball circles, now has a couple of jobs that force her to make a lot of tough decisions: liability lawyer and college basketball official.
And, just as was the case in her playing days, she is still right on target. Whether it was balancing the double load of academics in the Morrissey College of Arts and Sciences while playing a Big East Conference basketball schedule; or now juggling professional responsibilities on two courts - one of law, another of hardwood - she continues to make the "right calls" in life.
"It wasn't easy being a political science major at Boston College and trying to play Division I basketball," Roach said. "But I had a lot of fun, I made a lot of good friends, I got a great education, and I was able to go on to law school. It was tough, it was challenging, but I was prepared," she insists.
"Even when I got to law school, I ended up working during the day and going to classes at night. But I had learned how to multi-task when I was playing ball and studying at the same time. It was a natural transition for me."
Roach came to Boston College from Wareham, Mass., a picturesque town along the banks of the Cape Cod Canal. She was a Wareham High School legend for her ample basketball skills - becoming one of two athletes in the history of the school to have her jersey number retired.
She received an avalanche of college basketball scholarship offers from schools such as Penn State, Louisville and University of California-Irvine. But she didn't need to look beyond Chestnut Hill for a fulfilling college experience.
"The combination of knowing that I would be prepared for law school while being able to compete at a really high level is what drew me to Boston College," Roach said. "I wanted to play basketball at the highest level possible, and at the best school possible. BC just stood out. I really scrutinized the academics. I thought that if I was going to leave home it had to be something extraordinary. But, Boston College had everything that I was looking for. I knew that I would have a strong academic foundation and that I would have the BC academic reputation that was already strong and growing," she said.
"What raised the stakes for me was that BC was becoming a top-notch program, and the Big East was becoming one of the best leagues in the country," Roach continued. "Are you kidding me? We were going to be in the same league with Villanova, Georgetown, and Providence - all of these great schools."
Early in her freshman year, the former shooting star was asked to take over ball-handling responsibilities when senior Lynn Levin was sidelined with a serious knee injury.
"I had played point guard a little bit in high school," Roach said. "We had some great scorers - Sally Mediera, Marie Grant - they were able to carry the scoring for us. We had a pretty good team. I'm not sure if our record was reflective of our talent, but we were right on the cusp of developing." Roach, who chalked up 265 assists from her "quarterback" position, was a major contributor to that development.
Coach Margo Plotzke's Eagles surged from eighth place to third in the competitive Big East basketball race during Roach's varsity career.
Roach, a team tri-captain as a senior, says that she got a lot more out of her four years in Chestnut Hill than books and basketball.
"One of my fondest memories was a road trip to Manhattan where we all went out as a team and had a great dinner in the city" she recalled. "We learned how to carry ourselves; we were all maturing. We even went to a Broadway show one time and I absolutely loved it. It has been a part of my life ever since," Roach said.
After graduation, she set her sights on law school. "I knew I wanted to go to law school, but I wasn't ready immediately," Roach said. "I worked and saved some money. Three years later, I attended Suffolk Law. I went evenings, so it took four years instead of three. I really credit my law school success back to the discipline that my mother had taught me and that was instilled in me early on and stayed with me throughout my career."
While attending Suffolk, she worked for an independent risk management firm. "I worked there three of my four years, and I got to learn a lot of legal procedures in things like liability and causation, so it was great training for my career."
As a newly-minted lawyer, Roach handled professional liability work in the medical and construction industries, defending doctors, architects and engineers in various cases.
"I have done a lot of risk and liability work over my career," she stated. "Now I am doing a lot of contract work. I am also trying to do more entertainment law work and would like to develop that part of my practice."
But courts of law were not the only court in her vision. Fourteen years ago, she took up a dare from a friend and decided to try her hand at being an official for her favorite sport of basketball.
"A friend of mine was taking the officiating exam - I had never even thought about it," Roche explained. "She talked me into taking the written test along with her and then we went on and took the court exam. I guess I was always a student of the game.
Roche continued, "One night I was at a BC game and I bumped into Barbara Jacobs, the coordinator of officials for the Big East at the time, who had been the head coach at Syracuse when I played. I sat with her while she was evaluating the officials and I really started to pay attention to where the officials were and what they were doing," Roach recalled.
"After the game Barbara said to me, `you know you should really come to one of my camps and see if you would like it,'" Roach said. "So that summer, I went down to Washington, D.C. and immediately got bitten by the `officiating bug,'" Roach said with a laugh. "I think I've got as little bit of a knack for it. I got picked up by a couple of conferences and it really just took off from there."
"Took off" may be a modest term. Roach has become a big-time basketball official, under contract with numerous Division I conferences - including the Big East, American, America East, Ivy and other top leagues. Her work as an arbiter is highly-regarded, but she is never one to rest on her laurels. "Around this time each year, I assess where I am at and how effective my work is," Roach said. "As long as it's still working for me, I will continue."
With a full legal workload and a big-time refereeing schedule, Roach doesn't have much down time. But at the end of the hoop season, she adds another role: teacher. "When the past season was ending, I had a little bit of free time," Roach related.
"So I started teaching two law courses [at Suffolk Law School and Newbury College] on hospitality and entertainment law and criminal law. It's been tremendous. It's a lot of work. You don't just give the students an assignment - you want to see where they are, how much of the material they are grasping, where I need to improve, where I need to be firmer - and then you have to grade them," she said.
"I really cherish the fact that all of these compartments of my life have intersected throughout my life - my athletics, my academics, my professional career, my avocation as a referee," Roach said. "And, I have met people in every one of those arenas in different settings: I have met lawyers on the basketball court and basketball officials in the airport who are on their way to an arbitration hearing somewhere.
"It's been the intersection of all of these," Rita said. "It's been a unique experience. I love that I have basketball friends from BC, but I have friends who played other sports and other friends who never played anything. It's been a great `cocktail' - a great mix of people for me. They are all tied into my life at Boston College."
She's still making the right call.
