NBA first: Two women to officiate same game
NBA history was to be made Monday night at the Amway Center in Orlando, Florida. When the Charlotte Hornets and the Orlando Magic were scheduled to tip-off, two women were to work on the same officiating crew, a league first.
The league announced Monday that officials Natalie Sago and Jenna Schroeder were to share the same court. Sean Wright was to be the game’s third referee.
In 1997, Violet Palmer and Dee Kantner became the first women to serve as referees in the NBA. It was the first time that women officiated regular-season games in an all-male U.S. professional league. Since then, two female referees have never officiated the same game.
Sago joined the league in 2018 as a full-time NBA official. Schroeder joined in 2019. They have experience in the NBA G League and the WNBA.
Only seven women have become fulltime referees in NBA history with five currently on the officials roster: Simone Jelks, Lauren Holtkamp-Sterling, Ashley Moyer-Gleich, Sago and Shroeder.
In 2019, NBA Commissioner Adam Silver said he wanted more female officials in the league: “It’s an area, frankly, where I’ve acknowledged that I’m not sure how it was that it remained so male-dominated for so long. Because it’s an area of the game where physically, certainly, there’s no benefit to being a man, as opposed to a woman, when it comes to refereeing.
“The goal is: Going forward, it should be roughly 50-50 of new officials entering in the league. Same for coaches, by the way. We have a program, too. There’s no reason why women shouldn’t be coaching men’s basketball.”