Women's Final Four Officials
 

Anyone know who they are?

Although, typically you can guess 4 or 5 of them and be right in any given year.

haven't seen it listed yet. This may be a silly question, but is there ever any "cross over" of officials that have been in both sets of ncaa finals in their careers?

Lisa Mattingly is working Wash/Syr game. Big surprise. Every women's game I see on TV either has Mattingly or Kantner. Brooks a lot too.

Kyle Bacon from PHX, working the Washington/Syracuse game. I believe the first for him. The last official I knew worked men's and women's tournament games was Bob Scofield. I don't know of any that worked finals.

UConn/Oregon State:

Brenda Pantoja
Felicia Grinter
Joe Vaszily


Washington/Syracuse:

Lisa Mattingly
Denise Brooks
Kyle Bacon


Almost surely means Dee Kantner will work the final, and I wouldn't be surprised if Tina Napier is, too.

Well-deserved
 

Great to see Kyle Bacon recognized. All-around good dude. How you like them apples, Mulkey? ;)

Wasn't Brenda Pantoja working the NBA? Is she still working games there?

She was. It doesn't appear as though she has worked any NBA games since the '13-14 season.

As to the championship, I'm thinking Bryan Burnette will be on the court. He was the ALT last year and on the women's side that tends to mean you get the Chip the next season.

Which two female officials will be with him?:p

It may/may not be that way but you'd never hear me complain about it, even if I was at that level. As one of my supervisors said a few seasons ago, "We're in their game."

Oddly enough, none of my NCAAW supervisors is female. If I get picked up by one or more of the conferences I'm going for this summer that will change but the only female supervisor I work for is in NYC GV. I worked about 40 3-person games NCAAW & HS combined this past season. I had a female partner in 13 of those games (two unlucky women worked with me twice :p ). I had only one game where I was partnered with two women.

Basically.

Peace

Not to segway on this thread, but I'm sure this has been discussed here before, and I'm wondering why any of you think we will get over the "gender" card in the striped world and there will come a day when a woman will be able to work mens' ball on a regular basis and have an opportunity to maybe someday work the tournament, and maybe even a Final Four?

An annual thread at this exact time of year, at least for as long as I've been a member.

Let me guess you are shooting for the Patriot / A- 10 Glad to see Levinson is treating you well.....

Actually it's mainly D2 conferences but I wouldn't turn away A-10/Patriot [emoji6] . At any rate there are four D2s in my neck of the woods that have schools I can reach. D2 is the first level where I see female officiating supervisors.

Sent from my SM-G900P using Tapatalk

Speaking of Bob Scofield, I noticed he was the alternate on Sunday.

How do you segway on a thread???

Am I missing something or did he mean segue?

Smooth Transition ...
 

I don't think there's as much of a "gender card" as many think, especially now that there are females working in the NBA and NFL.

But a female official with any talent at all will be working a full college schedule in less than 5 years and will be working at the D1 level in less than 10 (or even earlier). That rarely happens on the men's side. Why would a female official make that choice? Especially when there's a huge thumb on the scale at every level for females in the women's game....

So, random thought -- were Americans always this bad at spelling or are we just noticing it more now that everyone's online?

This wasn't a misspelling, it was a misused word. People have been misusing words in their conversations forever. When you misuse a word on an Internet board like this, 100 people see it. When you misuse it in a conversation, only a few people may notice.

Tomato, to-mah-to. ;)

And if a word is a homonym (or close), you can't tell during oral conversation if a person used an incorrect word or not. "Not to Segway..." and "Not to segue..." would sound the same.

See...and I would have pronounced it "seg". On the Internet nobody knows I am wrong. In a conversation, people would be wondering what the junk I'm talking about.

Ok, so I'm not missing some new slang. Whew.

All-female crew in the final

Dee Kantner
Lisa Jones
Beverly Roberts

I could have told you that, ain't no dudes getting the final anymore.

You mean....since last year? :confused:

Suprisesd by that
 

*I was surprised that the crew was entirely female. Not even one male ref. Which prompted me to wonder--since I had recently been writing about "age, racial, and gender bias" in officiating--why was a male ref not on there?

I have to be very cautious about drawing conclusions because it has been pointed out to me that my analysis of "age, gender, racial bias in the officiating industry" is too "simplistic". Was the evaluative rating of the male refs too low? Was there not a male ref willing to request the game? Were these the three highest rated refs available--which just by sheer probability just happened to be all "female"?
If I were to postulate why there were no male refs in that game, then the most parsimonious explanation would simply be: "the assignor only wanted to use only female refs".

The pool of officials for the later portions of the tournament is small. One part of the criteria for those assignments is performance in post season and tournament games.
"...a male ref requesting the game..." doesn't happen. (Perhaps blue font would've been appropriate with your statement?)
The goal, on the Women's side, has always been to eventually fill Women's game assignments with women officials.

I have no problem with it. Other than the coaches who have to win to get to that level, why not the crew represent the players on the floor?

Peace

Until they hire 19-22 year olds to officiate, this will never happen.

Oh, wait, I know what you mean... :rolleyes:

In the last 6 years there have been 54 on-court Final Four officials. 16 have been male.

2 males have worked the final in the last 6 years out of 18 assignments.

If you're going to work women's college as a male, this is a reality you sign up for.

And a reason that many of us have decided that was not for us. I actually like their philosophy and respect it totally.

Peace

That should happen the same day the players on the floor represent the communities which the teams represent. :/

What Jeff said. And as an NCAAW official it doesn't bother me one bit.

As I said/implied earlier in this thread, I work with a lot fewer female officials than you might think in both NCAA and HS GV. I had two quarterfinal and one semifinal GV game last month and of the nine officials assigned only one was female. It changes slightly in the lower levels of NCAA and JUCO but not a whole lot. Believe me, men have their chances but the desire is to have female officials for the high-profile events at the highest levels. Makes sense to me.

Well I believe that officials should look more like a cross section of everyone rather than just 3 of the same type of person on every game. I work in a rather urban area often and there is an effort to hire officials for games that look like the participants on some level.

Peace

Faith And Begorrah ...
 

Several yeas ago I was selected to officiate a game involving the visiting Irish National Junior Team. I was told that both my partner, and I, were selected because we were both Irish American (our assignment commissioner at the time was also Irish American). It seemed "right" at the time, but now I wonder if that's the "American" way? Should race, national origin, religion, gender, sexual orientation, age, etc., be used in the assignment of games?

The best...
 

...is when I've worked games between a pair of Catholic schools. I once had a coach tell me that "I must be a St. so-and-so" guy. After I told him I was Jewish, he didn't say a word the rest of the game.

*Interesting: you were selected to work the game based on your "declared ethnicity". In that instance we can only blame the assignor for promulgating "ethnic bias"; however, I believe what the subtext of your post is: "should you have accepted the games knowing that your were a prejudicial choice"? Or should you feel fortunate because your ethnic background just happened to match what they assignor was looking for? This complex and I will have to think more on it. But thanks for sharing Billymacs.

You need to think less not more.

So three white guys working a game with one team all white and the other team all of a completely different race sound fair to you? Well that is the American way, because that happens all the time. And when something happens, guess what is sometimes the accusation? Why would you not hire people in officiating like the participants ever? We are not talking about major college here where everything is on video and multiple angles and scrutiny are a common place. This is often youth or high school sports where people take all kinds of bias into their positions (and I am not talking about the officials BTW).

I had a coach once ask me when he had 3 African-Americans working his game when he was at a suburban school that happened to be entirely African-American and he was playing a school from the city that was entire African-American. He asked me and my partner, "Why can I not get 3 Black officials when I am playing (Fill in a team from his conference that was clearly not like his community)?" I told him, "I really cannot answer that, we do not assign anything."

The bottom line is the American way is often having officials on games that look nothing like the actual players or top teams in sight. If that is the case, there is something very wrong. There needs to be diversity when there are diversity in the participants. Just like a business does not put a staff of people that work in a place that look nothing like or talk nothing like the people they want to gain their business. Do they put non-Spanish speaking people in communities where the entire community speaks Spanish? Nope, not unless they want someone else to get their business. Why do we accept that in what we are doing?

Peace

I have a lot of schools witn all Caucasian players and coaches. Based on what you're saying, I should stop sending African-American officials to those schools.

Jeff, you and I work many of the same schools, both HS and college, with many of the same group of officials. I agree with you, I have not worked with an official at either level that I thought was biased. I am sure there are a few of them out there, but I haven't personally worked with them.

Here is where I think your analogy to Spanish speaking communities and basketball officiating falls apart and why I disagree with your position on this issue. You are correct, it would be foolish not to have sales people who can speak Spanish working locations where the majority, if not all your potential customers will be speaking that language. However, you do not have to be of Hispanic decent to speak Spanish fluently. A person of any race or ethnicity that is capable of speaking Spanish would be able to work effectively in that area. In basketball, the thing that is analogous to language in your example is knowing the rules and mechanics. It is not being of the same race or ethnicity of the participants. Therefore, it shouldn't matter what the race or ethnicity or gender of the official is calling the game, as long as they can effectively speak the language of basketball.

I did not suggest that one individual has to speak Spanish, but you better have people in the office that do in that kind of community. And if everyone in a community speaks Spanish you better have several. That really was not a comparison to officiating other than to say that what works in one place, might not work in another place.

Actually being of the same race as someone is not about knowing the rules, it is more about how you interact with the participants. There is a big difference in how African-Americans interact with African-American officials than they do someone not of that race or culture. And when we have conflict it might be easier to understand the interactions and to deal with the interactions. That is just a fact as it is in other aspects of life. So if you are a person that is not used to certain places, that might be hard for you to adjust to or deal with. That is why you know we have people that have no desire or understanding of what it is like to work games in the CPS. And there is a reason there are only certain officials that work those games as us from the suburbs almost never get asked. So it must matter to someone, it is just who is doing the assigning.

Peace

Revisions c. 1950.

See Brown vs. Board of Education, 1954.

If you got that out of this discussion, then you were not really paying attention. If you were paying attention, I clearly said that if there are officials that always look different than the participants in almost every situation, there is something wrong with that picture.

At the State Finals I just worked, every single team out of the 8 had an African-American starter on their programs. To be specific, 2 of the schools in 4A had an entirely African-American team and coach. Two of the Catholic School in 3A had also almost entirely African-American players and if they had a kid that was not Black, it was like one player in total that even played regularly. Now I am not suggesting that out of the 12 officials assigned that all 12 should be African-American, but we seem to not have any issues if all 12 are Caucasian or even not from the area of the teams.

At least at the high school level this is an extension of classroom. One of the roles of an education is to have role-models or have our children have people that understand them. I do not think it is right to tell kids you can be everything in the game like a player or even a coach, but you cannot be the highest authority figure of the game which is an official. To me the situation that happen a view years ago in the 2A State Finals never happens when a racial slur is used and no one is ejected from the game, but they eject a kid for an initial reaction that happened to touch an official. Diversity on that crew might have curbed some of the extra-curricular crap going on that was clearly a difference in racial and cultural (on both sides) make-up.

I do not know what your situation is in Wisconsin or the teams that you assign, but I would assume that Milwaukee teams look a little different than teams from other parts. I am sure those assigning consider that when they have to assign those teams.

Peace

I know that I've worked schools where the officials were the only Caucasians in the building (I lived in New Orleans for a while) and this was never an issue. I sometimes drive over 100 miles to work games involving city teams, including Milwaukee teams. More fun to work, more challenging to manage. Makes me better.

I won't deny that basketball is different in rural areas than in urban areas -- it is. I won't deny that there are officials who simply aren't prepared to work different styles of basketball. There are.

But to me, this has nothing to do with race.

I've met you once. I never saw you as Jeff Rutledge, African-American official. I just saw you as Jeff Rutledge, the guy I knew from the forum.

But you'll just tell me as a white guy I just wouldn't understand, so don't bother.

I won't deny that basketball is different in rural areas than in urban areas -- it is. I won't deny that there are officials who simply aren't prepared to work different styles of basketball. There are.

But to me, this has nothing to do with race.

I've met you once. I never saw you as Jeff Rutledge, African-American official. I just saw you as Jeff Rutledge, the guy I knew from the forum.

But you'll just tell me as a white guy I just wouldn't understand, so don't bother.[/QUOTE]

I get what you are saying and I get what you are missing from my point of view. But once again when I am standing in front of people who are from this area that have never met me, they assume some very basic things about me and others without even asking. It is assumed for example that I came from Chicago or work Chicago Public League games. And that assumption is often made without any asking or trying to see past what I look like. So it can be part off the equation just like you would not assign officials that are not understanding of the place they are officiating games. I never said it was the only factor, but it is a factor like anything else.

All I will say is you probably would not understand because just like some other things you might not realize how different someone like myself my face basic, every day situations. That is not being dismissive, just stating what seems to be a fact with you or others until they see some things upfront.

If it matters to a Senator that comes up to me at the State Finals asking me why there are not more African-American officials, then it must be something that participants, coaches or fans notice on some level.

Peace

I believe they call that (hiring based on race) illegal discrimination.

Does not apply to independent contractors.

Not sure that applies in a business where they hire based on multiple factors.

Walgreens or Walmart might hire you for a job and still put you in a location where you look like or represent the company. That is not discrimination, that is putting people where they will succeed or help grow the company.

And as said, we are independent contractors, people all the time reject the terms of the contract.

I also doubt it would be even close to discrimination when the majority of the representation of the staff looks nothing like the participants and the people doing the assigning are using a small percentage of their staff to give them certain assignments.

Peace

Does not apply to protected classes either. Meaning it is not illegal to hire a protected class over an unprotected class, especially to meet your Affirmative Action plan...assuming the two candidates are of equal ability and meet the job description.

Not saying it's right or wrong and not trying to make it political. Just pointing out it is not illegal to hire based on race in some instances.