Two women in stripes - newspaper article

[Mark Padgett]

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.