BY PEPPER FISHER
Port Angeles – When 5 women step out onto the football field this Friday at Civic Field in Port Angeles, they will do something that has never been done in Washington state’s history. Those 5 women will be the first-ever all female officiating crew for a boys’ varsity football game in Washington.
The women are part of the North Olympic Football Officials Association, which recruits, trains and provides the officials you see at high school games from Quilcene to Neah Bay. The president of the organization is Dave Farrington. We asked him how this historic game came to be, and he said you’d have to start with Kaila Olin.
“We’ve had one official, Kaila Olin, who’s going to be the referee that night. She’s been with us since she got out of high school back in…somewhere in 2016, maybe. She is currently a college official. She was the first woman to ever work a high school state championship game in the state of Washington. And she’s also the first girl to ever be the head referee, and that happened last year.”
The 5 woman are all from the Olympic Peninsula. The crew will be led by Referee Kaila Olin from Port Townsend, the umpire will be Molly Mayhan of Port Angeles. The head linesman is Rainee Signor of Clallam Bay, Maggie Wright from Port Angeles will handle line judge duties, and the back judge is Shaila Wood of Sequim.
Farrington says, since Kaila Olin came on board, the organization has had a lot of success recruiting young women. So much so that, out of the 25 or so total crew of officials, 40% are now women.
Farrington acknowledges that while there are plenty of people that are not ready to accept that an all-woman crew can or should be on the field officiating a varsity football game, he’s seen these women in action and his confidence is high.
“I do have a lot of confidence in these women. All of them are athletes. Very good athletes. The white hat referee, like I said, she’s a division 2 college official. We have college basketball official on the crew. Two other high school officials. They’re very knowledgeable and very capable of doing this job.”
We’ll bring you the Roughrider vs. Mount Baker game live on Friday with you host Oly Archibald starting at 5:00 on Newsradio KONP.
(Photo of Kaila Olin courtesy of Seattle Times)