Sarah Thomas is set to become the NFL’s first permanent official, the Baltimore Sun’s Aaron Wilson reported on Friday.
The 42-year-old Thomas is no stranger to breaking gender barriers. She was the first woman to officiate a game in Mississippi’s top high school division, first to referee a major college football game after joining Conference USA’s full-time staff in 2007, and first to officiate a bowl game when she worked Marshall’s win over Ohio in the Little Caesars Pizza Bowl in 2009.
The married mother of three has been on the NFL’s radar since 2007 and for the past two summers has participated in the league’s officiating development program, the pipeline from which all full-time hires are made.
Thomas has spent time in the New Orleans Saints’ and Indianapolis Colts’ training camps and officiated a 2013 preseason game between the Saints and Oakland Raiders.
The Mississippi native attended the University of Mobile on a basketball scholarship and led the Baptist-affiliated school to the 1993 NAIA tournament before graduating with a degree in communications. Previously, she became the first athlete – male or female – to letter five times in a sport at Pascagoula High School.
Thomas, who missed playing sports after college, was first intrigued by football officiating when she accompanied her brother to a Gulf Coast Football Officials Association meeting in 1996.
“I got involved in officiating football because I was intrigued when these guys took it seriously,” she told ABC’s Good Morning America in 2013. “But then I was more challenged at, ‘Hey, I really don’t know the game of football,’ and, being a competitor, I really wanted to see, ‘Hey, what’s in store with this?’”
Though Thomas will be the league’s first full-time female official, she’s not the first woman to work an NFL game.
In 2012, Shannon Eastin was tabbed as a replacement line judge for the Detroit Lions-St Louis Rams regular-season opener amid the officials’ strike.
