Deidra Mohr has a role to play when she steps on the stage.

The Dunbar native brings that same mentality to suiting up to officiate a variety of sporting events around the state, including recently finishing her fourth year at the IGHSAU state softball tournament in Fort Dodge.

Mohr called the balls and strikes behind the plate for the Class 2A championship game between Iowa City Regina and Van Meter on Friday, July 21, the last of her three games of the week.

“It’s like a show, it’s like being on stage,” Mohr said. “I wouldn’t say I have a big ego, but I do want to make sure that I am doing what I need to do so that when the curtain rises and the curtain closes that everyone has an enjoyable time.”

Mohr graduated from East Marshall in 2007 and moved to Los Angeles, completing her studies at American Musical and Dramatic Academy’s Los Angeles campus, and had several theater, film and television credits to her name.

With cross country as her primary sport of the ones she participated in at East Marshall, she also had sporting pursuits she wanted to pursue in addition to her acting passions.

The best way for her to scratch that sport itch out west was to jump into officiating for a competitive slow pitch league, following in the footsteps of her father, Dave, who has officiated for the better part of six decades.

That led her to high school officiating gigs in California, which caught her dad’s ear.

“He said, ‘Deidra, I’m not dead yet,'” Deidra recalled, “‘how would you like to be my officiating partner until I can’t move anymore?'”

Deidra agreed, returning home to Iowa and throwing herself into the profession, starting with a mixture of baseball and softball where Dave noted that for baseball, she’d often be the first female umpire at a given school’s baseball event.

While the Mohrs don’t officiate together as much anymore, Deidra found herself hooked into officiating as a way to stay active in sports after high school.

“It’s hard to stay involved with sports as a female,” she added. “Not a lot of rec leagues, even co-ed is very rare, so it was a way to stay involved and they’re always talking about how they have a lack of officials, especially younger ones. I realized it was something I liked … you have these great chances for game management, preparation. It’s enjoyable and a challenge at the same time.”

The IGHSAU brings in its best officiating crew possible for the weeklong softball tournament, with 45-50 umpires staffing the five-class event that usually results in umpires working three games – one behind the plate, one on the first-base line, and one on the third-base line.

“She’s an up-and-comer for us,” said Cathy Creighton, softball umpire coordinator for the IGHSAU. “She may not have as much experience but she has all the other qualifications.”

The newbie experience at state is “baptism by fire,” as Deidra put it, with first-time umpires usually working behind the plate for their first game at state.

“It’s pure excitement and fear at the same time,” Mohr said. “Everything’s livestreamed or televised and you’re under that microscope, and you’ve maybe worked with these other officials once or twice. How will you handle the pressure of a game between two elite teams? … You go in there with expectations and eyes on you.”

She admits success is hard to measure as an official: “You’ll never have a perfect game, but as an umpire you’re expected to be at 100 percent and get better from there.

“There’s always one play you look back on, but you just have to take that and go to the rulebook, ask your other officials and look at how you can improve on it. We’re not attacking anyone – we just want the best for your kids, want you to have fun because we know it’s not a game you can play for a long time. You want to be someone that supports the sport.”

Mohr is one of 167 female umpires registered in Iowa out of 959 total across the state.

Creighton, who’s officiated for around 30 years, acknowledges that while being a female umpire isn’t as challenging as it was when she first started, there are still hurdles to overcome.

“You have to be able to take feedback from other umpires that want you to get better, and you have to be able to converse with the coaches about the rules,” Creighton said. “And you can’t be disappointed about making a mistake once in a while. You have to be able to go back and do the next game.”

The best way for her to find perspective on umpiring was to put herself back in the shoes of the Deidra Mohr swinging the bat for the Mustangs during softball summers in the early aughts.

“How did I perceive umpires as a player? What were games that I liked playing in, win or lose?” Mohr said. “I want to be someone on the field that’s approachable by anyone. Coaches, players, whoever I’m working with, I want to be approachable, pleasant, and still have respect for the rules, be unbiased and have a high level of knowledge so that this game can be played to its best outcome.”

Mohr keeps a full schedule of officiating duties to the point where she can sustain herself as an independent contractor. In the spring, she works collegiate softball, mostly for the American Rivers Conference in Division III. In the winter, she does some junior college basketball but primarily focuses on high school girls and boys basketball doubleheaders, and in the fall handles some officiating duties for volleyball.

It’s hard for Mohr to put a number on the amount of hours she spends dedicated to officiating in a given week, month, year.

“Frankly, whenever I see a warranty on a car where it’s so many hundred thousand miles, I think ‘Well, that won’t last long,'” she noted.

And she hasn’t forgotten about her acting desires in Iowa, either. In 2019, she won a Cloris Leachman Excellence in Theatre Arts Award for Actress in a Featured Role in a Play for her performance as several characters in a TheatreMidwest production of “The Friendly Hour”.

Just recently, she performed as a “shadowcast” member for a screening of 70s cult hit “The Rocky Horror Picture Show”, which involves performers acting out the scenes along with the film to entertain the unique audiences that have grown around the film.

She also takes any opportunities she can to pitch in around the area, whether it’s directing school musicals or plays, helping with music, or coaching students in speech classes.

She hopes the way she approaches umpiring can inspire others like her that gave officiating a try.

“It really is something you can make into a full-time thing, a part-time thing, or at the very least you can say ‘I tried it and it wasn’t for me,'” Mohr said. “We really just need people to step up. We know there are plenty of people in the stands with opinions [on umpire calls] and we’re asking them to bring those opinions, we welcome it. … Even if we can get a handful of new officials every year, we welcome it.”

Creighton noted that statistics show that new umpires, whether female or male, often don’t stay in the profession after the first 2-3 years.

“So there’s a lot of umpires that are my age, and not a lot that are Deidra’s age,” Creighton said.

Mohr encourages those interested in officiating to reach out to current officials, and try to build a relationship where they can get a mentor that can help them answer the tough questions about the profession.

“I have to give my dad a lot of credit, when I was officiating in California, if I ever had a question I’d call him and we’d look in the rulebook and figure it out,” Mohr said. “All you ever want to do is give them your best effort, whether it’s a spring scrimmage, a regular season game with an 0-20 team versus a 20-0 team, or a state championship. It’s a building experience.”