Officiating

In early November, I received the email I’ve been waiting ten years for: “You have new games”, read the subject line--- and when I logged into the officials’ website— I received my first high school VARSITY assignments!!  I could barely contain my excitement, but being superstitious, I refrained from blogging about it before now so as not to jinx myself.  Now, with several games behind me, I can tell the world:  I'm no longer on the road to varsity; I have finally arrived at my destination!

On May 7, Helena Costa became the first female to coach a professional men's soccer team in the history of the sport in France. I was thrilled to read the announcement, not only because its historic importance, but because of what did not include: completely absent from the article was any mention of her height, body style, hair color, fashion sense, or other meaningless traits too often included in articles involving women. Even better, there was no suggestion that Costa was bossy; at least not yet, and hopefully  not ever! Bravo, Coach Costa! Bravo!

My relocation to North Carolina temporarily disrupted my officiating schedule. With membership into a new association pending,  I needed to find a way to work on my game during the summer and fall without the benefit of regularly scheduled summer basketball. Tennis provided an excellent venue for physical preparation.  Tennis, like basketball requires fitness, quickness, teamwork and stamina. But while tennis helped with the physical game, it was watching Little League baseball, more than anything else, that helped the most with the mental side of basketball officiating.

Being a woman official who wants to achieve varsity status requires an understanding of the unique challenges and dynamics that may not exist in traditional work environments.

A video recently posted on YouTube (see below) featured footage of a high school basketball team committing six fouls in which the videographer accuses the officials of miscalling the fouls.  Like many, he considered any hard foul resulting in the player falling to the court a flagrant foul.  Problem is that such contact is not automatically a flagrant foul; it could be an intentional foul, or it could be just a hard, but ordinary, personal foul.