School in spotlight for stance on ref

KANSAS CITY, Mo. -- The uniform exceeds the individual inside.

There’s no too tall or too short. No differentiation between male or female. Asian, Hispanic, black, white. Doesn’t matter.

Wear an official’s uniform and you no longer represent yourself. You’re the embodiment of an organization, an emblem of order.

Michelle Campbell has always lived by the creed of the uniform, be it the pressed blues of Albuquerque Police Department or the striped shirt of a rec league referee. Once inside that uniform, her actions are defined by it.

“When I’m in that uniform, there’s that professional switch that kicks on where I have to act professional and be a certain way, where I can’t just be Joe Blow citizen at the time,” Campbell said.

That wasn’t enough on Feb. 2, when Campbell showed up at St. Mary’s Academy as a last-minute substitute official for a boys varsity basketball game and was turned away.

She heard something about not wanting a woman in a position of authority over boys.

Keeping with the standards of the uniform, Campbell calmly walked out of the gym, two other officials joining in her protest.

“I had never experienced anything like that,” Campbell said. “I was dumbfounded.”

She wasn’t alone.

Once word of Campbell’s story spread, outrage followed. Newspapers fired off editorials. Women’s groups called for action. Bloggers derided the school’s action.

They said it was a shock, an affront to the headway women have made on the athletic fields.

“Am I surprised that this goes on?” said Marj Snyder, co-chief executive of the Women’s Sports Foundation. “I’m not surprised that women aren’t given jobs refereeing boys basketball games. I’m a little surprised they made a public incident out of it. That was just stupid.”

Officials at St. Mary’s have another perspective. They want same-gender role models and having a woman officiate a boys basketball game conflicts with that belief.

In a way, the school’s stance isn’t surprising.

St. Mary’s is owned and operated by the Society of St. Pius X, an organization founded in 1970 in response to reforms within the Catholic Church. Essentially, the group believed the Vatican had drifted away from traditional values, become too informal.

The Vatican didn’t agree. The organization’s founder, the late Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, was excommunicated from the church in 1988 after he consecrated four bishops without Rome’s consent.

And controversy is nothing new to St. Mary’s Academy. In 2004, the school was criticized for refusing to play a football game against a team that had a girl on its roster, resulting in a forfeit.

It hasn’t helped that the school, located about 25 miles northwest of Topeka, has been tight-lipped about the referee flap. The only comments came in a statement from its headmaster, Father Vicente Griego, posted on the school website.

“The Church has always promoted the ideal of forming and educating boys and girls separately during the adolescent years, especially in physical education,” the statement said. “This formation of adolescent boys is best accomplished by male role models, as the formation of girls is best accomplished by women.”

No matter how steadfast the school is in its beliefs, its stance conflicts with that of the Kansas State High School Activities Association.

The organization has to be cognizant of the differences between private and public schools; standards at private schools are often dictated by religious beliefs, public schools by state and district guidelines.

But beyond providing schools with officials, the activities association’s primary focus is the well-being of its member schools -- St. Mary’s is not a member but is approved to use its officials -- whether it’s settling a dispute or preventing a potential sexual-discrimination suit.

The activities association has scheduled an executive board meeting for March 11 to discuss the incident. Campbell and St. Mary’s officials have been asked to attend.

“The bottom line is whether it’s a public school or private school, if you’re a member of the activities association you accept the officials who were assigned to the game,” KSHSAA director Gary Musselman said. “We don’t want our schools to operate in a way that potentially conflicts with the law.”

Beyond the legal issues, critics of St. Mary’s say the school’s stance goes against decades-long efforts to put women on equal athletic footing.

Through Title IX, the legislation mandating gender equity in sports, girls have taken great strides in catching up to boys in athletic opportunities. Women became more prominent in professional sports, earning equal pay at Wimbledon, athletes such as Danica Patrick and Annika Sorenstam have held their own against men.

Roles even changed in officiating.

The NBA hired Violet Palmer and Dee Kantner as officials in 1997; Palmer is still there after nine years.

Melanie Davis cracked the gender barrier at the 2002 men’s NCAA basketball tournament, and Sarah Thomas was part of the crew for a Conference USA game last September, a first in the Football Bowl Subdivision.

Nicole Petignat cleared the way for women to officiate men’s European soccer matches at a 2003 UEFA Cup game, and just last week Canadian Dawna Townsend was appointed to the basketball officiating crew for the 2008 Beijing Olympics.

At the high school level, women officials have presided over boys athletic events for years, from wrestling to football to basketball.

Even with all the strides made, women still have to fight for equality in the sports world. Most of the time it’s subversive: girls not getting equal time in the gym, boys receiving new uniforms first, inequities in funding.

Some found St. Mary’s action harder to overlook.

“You’ve got to wonder what century we’re living in,” Snyder said. “They clearly believe that refereeing boys basketball games is a job for men. It has nothing to do with gender. You want the best referee, whoever that is.”

The situation -- and attention -- has blindsided Campbell.

She began officiating high school games two years ago, when her mother saw an ad in the local paper and thought it might be fun for her basketball-loving daughter. A former Kansas State player, Campbell worked games in rec and youth leagues back in New Mexico and this was a chance to stay in the game, try officiating at a higher level.