Becoming a ROOFEREE

By Emma Peterson. 

Former basketball coach Trent Lovewell discusses the unlikely path that brought him to roofing and helped create the ROOFEREES brand. 

For the last 26 years, Trent Lovewell has worked with Weatherguard, Inc., an Omaha-based company and home of the ROOFEREES. Who exactly are the ROOFEREES? To answer that question and more, Megan Ellsworth sat down with Trent for an episode of Stories from the Roof, sponsored by SRS Distribution. 

Meeting on the court 

To answer the question of where the term ROOFEREES comes from, we need to go back to before Trent joined Weatherguard, Inc. and was coaching college basketball at Iowa Western Community College. He recalled, “I was a college basketball coach, and John Higgins was, at the time, a college basketball official. And I would have him come to speak to my sports officiating class over at Iowa Western Community College, we got to know each other and became friends.” Little did Trent know at that point that becoming John's friend would change his career trajectory entirely.  

Enter Weatherguard, Inc. 

In 1984, John started Weatherguard, Inc. and over the next decade or so worked to convince Trent to join him. Trent shared a bit about this time:  

John kept telling me I needed to get out of coaching and into roofing. And I was always like, ‘I don’t know anything about roofing!’ And at some point, I decided I was ready for a change and listened to him. 

The transition from basketball coach to roofer was a challenge that involved a lot of on-the-job learning for Trent, but it was a challenge he rose to with the support of John.  

Becoming the ROOFEREES 

The team moniker of the ROOFEREES came from the shared career shift that Trent and John experienced. As Trent put it, “John was a referee and a roofer, and in my spare time I was still refereeing and coaching a bit, and that's how we came up with the ROOFEREES...It was a joke at first but the local radio station thought it was cool and our community really liked it and we just ran with it.” 

Now, 26 years into his roofing career, Trent couldn’t be happier about being a ROOFEREE, sharing, “It’s a new adventure every day, you never know what happens and it’s great. I get sentimental about it.” 

Listen to the whole episode to hear more of Trent’s story.