Clio’s Jenna Schroeder Becomes Only The Sixth Full-Time Female NBA Ref

Jenna Schroeder was a star basketball player in high school, college, and is now one of only four female officials in the NBA.

Schroeder started the 2019-20 NBA season as only the sixth full time female referee in league history. Right now there are only four women officials in the league, with Schroeder being the newest. She has put in the work officiating in the WNBA, NBA G League, and college basketball for the last 10 years.

Her basketball pedigree is definitely up to the task as she was a Miss Basketball candidate in 2004 while playing for Clio. She went on to lead SVSU in scoring during the three years she played for the Cardinals. Even when she was not playing basketball, she was officiating games. She told MLive how she started getting into officiating early on.

I started refereeing when I was in high school and after I graduated college and had more time, I just sort of fell into it, someone looked at me one day and asked why I didn’t just do it as a profession, and I said, ‘You can do that?

The short answer is yes, yes you can do that!

Jenna is living the dream, doing what she loves at the highest level possible. If her basketball history is any gauge, we expect to see Jenna officiating the NBA Finals in no time.

If you have any sort of problem with women officiating NBA games, then you should probably find a new sport to watch. Jenna is the start of a major influx of women moving into the NBA game thanks to the G League giving women a place to prove themselves.

History was made earlier this year when the G League debuted the first ever all female crew.