Female Officials Officiating Boys Basketball

[johnny d]

Even with stricter enforcement and new emphasis on reducing physicality to promote freedom of movement, there is a big difference in how the boys and girls games are played, and the expectations for how much physicality is expected and/or accepted. Around here, you do not have to work both boys and girls games, even at the HS level. In fact most officials do not work both. I wouldn't say there would be a problem with a female working a boys game here, it happens, although very rarely, the problem would be with a girls official, female or male, working a boys game. The perception, and most often the reality is that it is very difficult to move back and forth between both. Many officials, regardless of sex, would have a hard time adjusting to the speed and physicality of the boys game, if the overwhelming majority of their games were girls games.

It wasn't a female trying to officiate a boys game, but we had a similar situation a few years ago in the IL 2A state championship game. A school from the Chicago Catholic League, that played up tempo, physical basketball, and who normally competed against and was competitive with much larger schools, was in that game. The officials were three men from an area of the state where they would hardly, if ever, see basketball at that speed, athleticism, and physicality. The officials were completely overmatched and rapidly lost control of the game. Many videos from that game were posted on this site.

Bottom line, for most officials, it isn't a matter of how good you may be, like most people, one is going to be a creature of habit. Through them into a radically new environment, and most are going to sink.

Could a female work boys games consistently around here. Of course she could, but she would have to commit to working almost exclusively boys games from early in her career. If she was good, she would move up the ranks, but much slower on the boys side. We have more officials interested in working boys games than girls games, so she would have more competition. Because she could move up much faster on the girls side, most female officials in this area choose working girls games.