Football Manitoba – The Manitoba Football Officials Association, along with the Manitoba Women’s Football Foundation are offering the first ever “all women’s” tackle football officials clinic June 11-12 at the Investors Group Field.                                                                                                            

The Manitoba Women’s Football Foundation (MWFF) and with the Manitoba Football Officials Association (MFOA) want to seemore women wearing black and white stripes on the football field. “Tackle football is the final frontier for women in sports.                                                   

Nine years ago the Manitoba Fearless senior women brought women’s tackle football to Manitoba, 3 years later the Manitoba Girls Football Association was created for 9-16 year olds, now girls of all ages have a league of their own” said Tannis Wilson of the MWFF. “We currently have a hand full of female coaches, and a fair number of female trainers, managers, administrators and board members involved in the game but we are sorely lacking females officials”.

Ron Hallock of the MFOA & President of the Canadian Football Officials Association would like to see more female officials in Canada, “currently the US has a number of females officiating in the Pop Warner football leagues, a few at the college level and even one in the NFL. It is frustrating that we don’t have more in Canada.” He says “We currently have a handful in Eastern Canada and one or two in Western Canada and that’s just not good enough”

The June clinic will be run as a regular level one officials clinic, the only difference being only females 14 and up will be in attendance. Guest speaker, Martha Bradbury; one of the top CIS and high school basketball refs in Canada will be there to talk to the recruits about the special challenges and rewards of a female ref that officiates predominantly male sports.

“Women are well suited to officiating”, said Wilson, “women multitask well, they are firm yet fair, and can often diffuse a situation with tact, those can be great attributes on a football field, especially when you have riled up coaches and players”. 

“Our job is to teach the rules, help them to better understand the game of football, the relationship between officials and coaches and then help them to gain the confidence to go out and become great officials” said Ron Hallock.  

There is no charge for this clinic. The Women’s Officials clinic is being run concurrently with the 2016 Winnipeg Blue Bomber Coaches Clinic at IGF. For more information or to register for the clinic please contact us

mbwomensfootballfoundation@gmail.com or our website at www.manitobawomensfootballfoundation.blogspot.com