Okay, I’m going to tell a story.

So, three years ago I realised I needed to get a job while in university. I wanted a low-commitment job, something on campus, not too many hours. I was (still am) a neuroscience student and the program is demanding enough without having a job. So, a mutual friend of mine posted a job offer on Facebook:

Basketball referee wanted

Now, let’s preface this. I have awful hand-eye coordination, I couldn’t catch a metal ball with a magnetic glove. Plus, I understood the rules of basketball as much as I understood string theory, as in not at all. But money is money, the job was on campus, and it was a maximum of 10 hours a week. A lot of my friends were involved in the group which ran the basketball league, so I thought, “Why not? How hard can it be?”. I look back at that moment now and think “You fool.”

Me getting this job was a perfect storm, I was underqualified, and they were desperate for a new referee. Plus, I had seen “High School Musical” and attended middle school gym class, so I felt pretty confident that I could figure out what was going on. I mean, I passed organic chemistry, I could figure out basketball. I had planned to go home and watch YouTube videos, and there was a referee training session.

However, the training session got cancelled and classes got hectic, so I didn’t get a chance to look up the rules. And all of a sudden it was a Saturday morning and I was refereeing Tier 3 basketball, a sport I had no comprehension of.

The players could tell how shaky I was with my calls, and how dependent I was on my male coworkers. While coworkers were called “ref” by the players, I would get called “sweetheart” and “honey”. If players pushed my temper and I put my foot down, I would get called psychotic, emotional, and bitchy while my coworkers earned the titles commanding and intimidating.

I should’ve been fired in those first couple weeks. A dog would have been a more effective referee than I was. And if I’m being honest, I was enraged at the situation and at myself. I was resting on the laurels of my coworkers and the dependency was driving me insane.

In that first year of being a referee, every single coworker I had was a guy. Which was very different from my life up until that point. Growing up I had 2 sisters, 8 out of 10 of my cousins are girls, and I participated in musical theatre and choirs where guys were pretty few and far between. Growing up I learned that I could do whatever I wanted, and I didn’t need a guy to help me. It’s not that I wasn’t supposed to ask for help. Or even that I shouldn’t ask for help from men. But I was not a Disney princess; I was taught to be a competent young woman with drive and ambition and I wasn’t living that reality when I went to work. I was waiting around for guys to make the calls and allowing myself to just let them do all the work. My “powerful woman” attitude was getting washed away quickly. By my second term as a referee, I was done with my situation; I took matters into my own hands.

On my breaks I would watch other referees, I spent time after class watching basketball games on YouTube and “How To…” videos about refereeing. I actually went to training sessions. If I was confused about something during the game, I would make a mental note of it and go to my friend at the end of our shift and rattle off questions until all the fouls were clear in my head.

By my 2nd year as a referee I was asked to give advice to new refs, and I was getting complimented by players after the games. My bosses were offering to write me recommendation letters. I learned hand signs and read the rule book for the intramurals league about 4 times. I knew which rules were “Intramurals” rules and which rules were “basketball rules” (trust me, they’re different). My bosses kept getting me to ref…. problem games (you’d be surprised how often players throw punches in a recreational game) because I was able to hold my own when people started to yell. Not only had I gone on to solo ref Tier 2 and 3 games, but I was getting paid time and a half to ref the Tier 1 games. I was actually good at my job and it felt really good.

But despite putting in the hours, I was still a girl in a boys’ club. At first, I thought it was because the incompetence I had shown at the beginning was carrying over. In that case, as long as I knew what I was doing, that was enough for me; I was confident enough to know I didn’t need the validation from others so long as my employers were satisfied with my performance. But as years passed and coworkers and bosses and players turned over, I realised that wasn’t the case.

New referees would ask me if I was lost, if I needed help, or if I was new, when in reality they were there to shadow me. After games players tried to give me hugs, while my coworkers got handshakes and fist bumps. I think I fully understood how different my situation was one day after work. Between games, players strip down to their boxers to change from “day clothes” into “gym clothes” and vice versa. I always take my referee shirt off after work so I don’t walk around campus in an ill-fitting, sun-yellow shirt. One day in particular I couldn’t find my sweatshirt so I walked around for a couple minutes wearing high waisted leggings and a sports bra. I overheard two players saying, “She’s just doing that to get attention”. While you could only see about two inches of stomach, the two players wore nothing but boxers. Do you see the irony?

It took me a while to realize what was going on at work, because I had never experienced it before. It all set in when I started regularly refereeing women’s Tier one games. The players still argued, and made snide remarks during games, but the energy completely changed. I didn’t get called “sweetheart”, or “psychotic”. Nobody tried to put their hand on my shoulder or the small of my back when they talked to me. And I was free to walk around in a sports bra because everyone else does.

I had spent my entire life working with organisations that thrived on inclusivity. My musical theatre program growing up introduced me to the LGBTQ+ community. The choir I joined worked with individuals with disabilities and had community outreach choirs. And I think that the arts have always had a little bit of a leg up in terms of inclusion, because it calls to the free spirits. But for the first time in my life (I get that 21 years old is super late to the game - pun intended), I was thrown into the world of sports which juxtaposed so strongly to the world I grew up in. Sports divides the men and the women literally. The organisation I worked with was incredibly inclusive in terms of disabilities and genders and ethnicities and culture, but sports are still sports. The treatment I got, the “psychotic”, “bitchy”, “emotional”, “she’s-trying-to-get-attention”, hand-on-the-back, hit-on-me-after-work treatment I got was because I was a girl and my coworkers weren’t.

And I’m not shaking my fist at the sky saying “men are the worst and they’re all sexist pigs”. I seriously doubt the way I was treated was intentional or malicious. But all the same, I was treated differently and it kind of tanked. It took the wind out of my sails and reminded me that even though the world is changing for the better, that a lot of these old attitudes are going to take a while to get flushed out of the system. And sports can be a prime example. I bet it’s not even done consciously; but from an outsider looking in on sports, it’s incredible how much these actions can be ingrained in the culture.

Yes, my job drove me insane. I spent 5-10 hrs a week getting yelled at by people. My friend kept telling me to quit, but I didn’’t. Partly because it’s not in me to quit, also I think part of it reminds me that I can be the woman my mom raised me to be. That strong, independent woman I aspire towards. And I give so much credit to the league I worked in. The organisation I worked for celebrated diversity, and I think that’s why the work I put in translated into success. But in the end, I had to work for it. And I did it, and it stokes my fire and reminds me that I’m pretty badass. What’s that quote? “Give a girl a good pair of shoes and she can conquer the world,” I just happen to be wearing a pair of Nikes.

Learning the ropes