KANSAS CITY, Mo. — For over a decade, Stephen Reneau has been chasing a puck and a dream.
“I’ve been refereeing for, I want to say, 14 years now, and I used to be a manager at Pepsi Ice Midwest out in Overland Park. And one of my jobs was running the men's league,” said Reneau, an on-ice official at the 2022 Beijing Olympics.
One night early in his career, he took a shot he knew he couldn’t miss.
“One night we had a guy not show up, so I was like, 'Well, I know the rules well enough to at least help drop a puck here and there,'” Reneau said.
This was just the beginning of his career. With the help of mentor and friend Jeff Busch, president of the Kansas Ice Hockey Officials Association, Reneau began skating wherever the puck was going.
“I first saw Steve before he began officiating, and I saw his ability to skate and his personality. So we got him into officiating, and after a year or so, he was doing so well he got moved to the next level which is the USHL,” Busch said. “We got him into the regional and national officiating camp.
"Right after that, he got on board with the Central Hockey League, and one year later with the East Coast Hockey League as a referee and the American Hockey League as a full-time official. He went to the ISC working junior championships worldwide, and then he became a full-time official in the Pro European Hockey League."
With his wealth of experience, Reneau followed the puck all the way to a face-off unlike any other.
“One thing led to another, and I was selected last minute due to COVID and got the opportunity to be here in Beijing,” Reneau said. “I had felt that I had made it. Like there is no higher ground that I’m ever going to go in hockey than that moment of dropping a puck at an Olympic Winter Game.”
Reneau tells KSHB 41 News he was notified by a phone call while working in Las Vegas, and the news didn’t hit him until he was at the Kansas City Airport on the way to Beijing.
However, for Busch, the news brought him to tears when he got the call from Reneau.
“When I got the phone call that said, 'Hey Buschy, I made the Olympics,' it’s a day I’ll never forget,” Busch said. “To have Steve leave town with a dream, it’s unbelievable.”
Spending years in rinks around the world, standing in the Olympics Rings was a full-circle moment for Reneau.
“I didn’t know how I was going to feel," he said. "I mean I’ve reffed thousands of hockey games in my life, but nothing really made me ready for that moment, to drop the puck at the opening face-off of my first Olympics Games being Russia versus Slovakia at the time."
Now reaching new heights in his career, Reneau says he’s grateful for those who helped him along the way.
“I’m just happy that through the years, and with the great leadership that I’ve had in Kansas City, that I have been able to at least give us one little thing. Hey, we at least got someone to the Olympics in hockey,” Reneau said.
