Two women in stripes - newspaper article
 

Here's a story from today's Oregonian newspaper:

Two women in stripes: It's a first
Saturday, March 10, 2007
RACHEL BACHMAN

A remarkable play unfolded at the Oregon girls basketball state tournament Friday in Portland, and it wasn't X's and O's.

It was all X's -- XX chromosomes.

Both officials in the Wilsonville-Glencoe game were women. It was the first time in the history of the tournament's large-class competition that both game officials were female.

Delores Krumm and Melodee Schnell worked the game at the Chiles Center, which was in the consolation bracket of the Class 5A tournament.

"That's history," said Howard Mayo, commissioner of the Portland Basketball Officials Association. "That's good."

The OSAA prohibits officials working the tournament from talking to the media.

Sixteen referee associations send officials to the girls and boys basketball state tournaments. The largest number comes from the 330-member Portland association, of which 14 are women.

This year, three of the 12 officials working the Class 5A and 6A girls basketball state tournament are women. That's the most in the 32-year history of the tournament. All three of the women -- including Lea Ann Easton -- came out of the Portland association.

As recently as 1998, only three female officials had worked Oregon's large-school girls basketball state tournament, then called Class 4A. (All 6A and many 5A schools were 4A under the old classification system.)

It's possible that two women could call another game today, which features the 5A and 6A tournaments' championship games. Officials' assignments were made late Friday night.

Kudos to the two, well deserved.;)

If HS basketball in Oregon wanted real progess, then they would go to the three-whistle system!

Seriously, I don't care what gender or race of people work the games at the state tournament. The fact that people worry about and track this stuff is actually sad.

Who cares if the officials are male or female, or white, black, asian, or hispanic? We should only care about the quality of the job that they do.

I'd say it's kind of a sad statement that it's taken this long for this to happen....

Still a great story, though.

I agree.

Ontario went through a phase (still going on maybe) where they were pushing females officials big time. Don't get me wrong - some officials that did rise to higher levels were female, and they deserved it. There were also many female officials that should not have "been there" - mostly in provincial championship tournaments.

It certainly spawned a lot of discussion. The root of the discussions often came down to not caring who was on the game, just as long as they were the best to be presented - be it male or female.

I also remember when I was coaching (and was also in my 3rd year of officiating), a tandem of officials in a town called Trenton. My team was ranked #7 in the province, so of course I'm serious about about chances of winning the provincial title. So this game in Trenton had 2 officials - one guy was cut, bald head, young, and probably didn't have much bad luck with the ladies: he was good looking. The other guy had this (my opinion) ugly hair cut and had an ugly goatee too, and was tall & skinny (and not that good looking). The two of those were awesome together. I remember thinking to myself about the stereotypes I immediately placed on the officials before the game - that one would be a good ref and the other a bad ref.

I certainly was humbled after that game. Who cares if you're male, female, ugly, colour of hair, whatever. What job can you do on the court?

Another example: there's a guy in my former local board who doesn't ref at a high level. I'd say he's competent at grade 8 and below. But, his reproire (sp?) with kids that age is awesome. The kids at that age like him, as do many coaches. He's very much in shape, if you count round as a shape. So who cares what someone looks like, as long as he gets the job done?

Although I don't know Delores, I have worked games with Melodee and she is terrific. Besides having great court presence, judgment and mechanics, she laughs at my jokes. :)

OK - some people might think that last part is a negative.

I care. I think it's great for women and needs to be reported. Not so much for the historic moment, but for the fact that there's progress and opportuntity. You ever wonder why there's no women officials in NCAA men's? At least the NBA has one.

The problem in Oregon isn't that females are being pushed ahead of their abilities. It's that females with real abilities have been held back by the selection process and now that the selection process has finally started to deal with reality, high quality female refs are being put into their rightful places.

I know Camron will take issue with this. I don't care. It was way past time for these three refs to be working 5A and 6A tournament games, and they were a credit to their association. Hopefully, someday I'll be as good as they are, and I"ll be able to do the job, too. I say "hopefully" because now that we are actually making it possible for refs to be chosen according to their abilities and not by their social affiliations, I may have some shot at it, when I'm good enough.

First, you have to start laughing at my jokes. :D

It's about breaking barriers. That's important whether you recognize it or not.

That is not quite true, we've sent qualified women officials to the top state tourney before...with the old process. There were two that I remember since I've been in the PBOA, one of them moved out of town and never went to the tourney again from her new area. The other is working D1 ball and gave up HS ball after going to the top girls tourney in her last year. They were good enough to overcome the main deficiency of the system (lack of votes from boys coaches).

There were a handful of others that woud have made it if they had stuck around and spent the same 10-15+ years improving and earning the repect of their peers that all other other tourney official had to do...but they didn't want to put in the time and effort.

The only thing that held Melodee back in the past was the lack of coaches votes. Since she only worked girls game, she was never going to get the vote from boys' coaches and is not likely pull enough votes from girls coaches to overcome that obstacle. She did get the 11th most votes (out of over 200 officials) from fellow officials and has consistently done so. Lea Ann was only a few spots behind that. Those two have been strongly recognized by their peers as quality officials in the vote on a regular basis. If we had only eliminated the coaches vote from our old system, these two would have gone to the tourney anyway...by the vote of a lot of men (including myself).

With our new system where the commissioner gets to pick 1/3 of the slots without regard to the vote, the obstacle of getting boy's coaches votes can be addressed by bypassing the vote altogether.

I keep trying to tell everybody that coaches have a lot to do with your career as an official but nobody wants to hear it from me, mainly because of the propaganda that JR and some of the others are allowed to do to me on this forum after I post. You go T'ing up a coach, especially a undeserved T, it could have a huge effect on how fast you move up. I hear a lot of people say that you don't call a game based on what the coach thinks, and we really shouldn't have to. However, true be told, you better listen to what they have to say.

Your statement implies that an official should expect that a "deserved" T could also have a huge effect on how fast an official moves up. Thats a flawed system.

Just as the inmates shouldn't pick their jailers, the coaches should have little, if any, say in who officiates.

My .02

The part of the new system that makes it easier for women, and other qualified men btw, move up to tournament level is the part about people only being eligible if they didn't work a tourney last year. If that had been fully implemented this year, both Melodee and Lea Ann would have been eligible by votes, and would not have needed to be "commissionered" in.

I disagree that lack of boys' coaches' votes is the primary item in not getting into the tournaments. The problem isn't who votes and who doesn't. The problem is that once someone has been to the tournament, they have a sort of name-recognition and credibility that gets them more votes next year. By extending the rotation to include refs who are actually good enough, but get squeezed down the list by those who have been to tournaments in the past, not only women refs, but also refs like you, Camron, are more likely to get into the tournament.

I think the next step is to eliminate coaches' votes altogether, but I expect that's quite a ways down the line.

And being scared to issue a deserved T will have an even bigger affect on your career. No one here advocates giving "undeserved" T's, though.

You might want to check, but I'm pretty sure your strawman is burning.