#49 - J.J. Bilinski
JJ Bilinski grew up in Panama, a small town in the southwest corner of New York State. Starting at an early age he was heavily involved with a vast array of sports, including soccer, basketball, volleyball, baseball, golf, and bowling. He primarily focused on soccer and baseball in high school. After graduating high school and attending college, he shifted his focus to soccer and played NCAA-Division 3, which is where his passion for fitness and conditioning first started.
After graduating college, his talents allowed him to continue to play at the Semi-Professional level in NPSL and PDL (USL-2). He also had tryouts with USL-C teams and attended a professional player combine. As his playing career started wrapping up, JJ shifted his focus into coaching and officiating.
JJ began his coaching in 2009 at the college level, working with both men’s and women’s teams. He served as an assistant coach/strength and conditioning coordinator, designing fitness programs for the team throughout their college season. In that same year he also started officiating at the high school level and then progressed the following year into NISOA (College) and USSF.
After 2-3 years of coaching and officiating soccer he decided to take an even bigger step in another sport that he officiated in – baseball. He began umpiring baseball at the age of 13 and in 2011 after 11 years of umpiring at the high school and youth levels, he decided to enrol at Professional Umpire School. After 5 weeks of school and 2 weeks of an evaluation course, he earned a job in Minor League Baseball starting at the Rooke Ball League level in the Gulf Coast League. He spent the next 3 years progressing through the minor league ranks and worked his way into the Carolina League – Advanced A level.
In 2014, JJ decided to retire from Minor League Baseball and get back to his first love of officiating soccer. He returned to Western New York with a different mindset and wanted to pursue refereeing at the highest level. As he worked week in and week out in matches, and honing his referee craft, he also continued to diligently work on his own fitness and conditioning, as well as training other referees in fitness.
In November of 2016, JJ decided to move from Panama, NY to Tampa, FL where he could continue to “chase the dream” of refereeing at the highest level and be able to fitness train all year round outside.
JJ’s referee career progressed rapidly after moving to Florida and he has worked some of the country’s highest levels of matches including, International Friendlies, Professional Matches in the USL Championship, USL League 1, NWSL and as an MLS 4th Official.
JJ’s referee career wasn’t all positive as he had some injury set-backs late 2018/early 2019 seasons. However, he took the time to understand how and why those injuries occurred and made changes to his own fitness training. He took tremendous strides in overcoming those injuries by staying diligent in his rehab and came back in full for the 2nd half of the 2019 season.
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