Female Officials Officiating Boys Basketball

[constable]

Where I work, we do both. Girls season in the fall, Boys in the winter.

I work with a few officials who do a steady diet of both girls and guys ball. Exhibition. Rep. HS. Playoffs. College.

Newer officials here start out doing the ladies ball for a couple of reasons
1. It comes first in the school calendar year.

2. There tends to be less bullshit in the girls ball. The way our boys coaches behave, even towards our more seasoned officials might lead many to hang up the whistle.

Not everyone can make the adjustment. It is something I struggle with- especially going back and forth. Just when you think you are done with the girls game you get a girls rep game. The next day, you could have a men's college game.

Good officials adapt. It's what we do. The biggest adjustment for me when I prepare for a ladies game is remembering I might not need to toss the ball as high.

If a coach has a problem with an official I'm working with it better be because the kicked a call and not because they have a uterus. If it is the former, then fine as long as they don't cross the line. If it is the latter I hope they have a monitor in their dressing room because they aren't sticking around to watch it.

[jTheUmp]

Originally Posted by constable

If a coach has a problem with an official I'm working with it better be because the kicked a call and not because they have a uterus. If it is the former, then fine as long as they don't cross the line. If it is the latter I hope they have a monitor in their dressing room because they aren't sticking around to watch it.

*Applause*

[ReffingAce]

I work with a young (24) female official on my crew (3 person) with this being her 1st full season on varsity and I must say she did a tremendous job. Obviously there were some learning moments, but all officials have those, usually (hopefully) every game if they are striving to always get better. Overall, our strongest games were with her working a BV.

Every time we entered the gym during pre-game heads would turn as fans and players noticed a female ref coming on the court. Many of the girl players would come up to her thanking her for doing the game prior to starting saying, "we're so happy you are reffing our game, we've played for 7 years and never had a female ref!" Fans would give her high fives after the game (BV) as we came back out of the locker room saying, "You rocked it out there!" She's also gotten positive feedback from both coaches and ADs.

She's very good about switching up her game calling when it comes to GV or BV. This could be attributed to many things and as interesting as it may seem, most of her learning and growth in officiating came from working intramurals during college and I feel that really helped her understand contact, advantage/disadvantage, and reffing based on quickness, rhythm, balance, speed.

We only have 5 women in our entire association and she's the only one working both GV and BV. We'll see where she goes but she works harder than many throughout the area and I feel she'll move up if she wants it.