{"id":49834,"date":"2019-10-23T15:39:21","date_gmt":"2019-10-23T20:39:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/?p=49834"},"modified":"2019-10-23T15:39:26","modified_gmt":"2019-10-23T20:39:26","slug":"%ef%bb%bffirst-woman-to-officiate-for-the-nfl-to-appear-for-fhsus-presidential-speaker-series","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/?p=49834","title":{"rendered":"\ufeffFirst woman to officiate for the NFL to appear for FHSU\u2019s Presidential Speaker Series"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><strong>BY UNIVERSITY RELATIONS<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Sarah Thomas is the first woman to officiate a major college football game, the first full-time female NFL game official and, in January this year, she became the first woman to referee an NFL postseason game. <br><br> Thomas will tell her story, \u201cBreaking Through: My Journey to Becoming the First Female NFL Offical,\u201d at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, Nov. 12, in the Beach\/Schmidt Performing Arts Center at Fort Hays State University as part of the university\u2019s Presidential Speaker Series. <br><br> Tickets are free but required. Fort Hays State student tickets will be available beginning Tuesday, Oct. 29. The limit is one ticket per person with a valid Tiger ID card. Tickets for the public will be available beginning Tuesday, Nov. 5. The limit is four per person. <br><br> They are available at the Memorial Union Student Service Center or by calling 785-628-5306. Tickets will also be at the box office, depending on availability, on the night of the presentation. <br><br> In 2017, Thomas described to Elle magazine a kind of accidental beginning to the chain of events that took her to a professional career in the NFL. <br><br> Ten years earlier, she was officiating at high school games but was barred from working even junior college games. Then an NFL scout saw her working at a high school championship game and saw something in the way she conducted herself on the field. <br><br> The scout, she said, connected her with a retired NFL referee who then got her into NCAA Division 1 football officiating. A year later, in 2007, she was officiating D1 football. She was on her way. <br><br> In her appearance at Fort Hays State, Thomas will share her insights on overcoming adversity and odds and \u201cfinding your passion while maintaining work-life balance.\u201d She will talk about \u201csucceeding as a female in a male-dominated industry but achieving breakthrough success for males and females alike.\u201d <br><br> The Presidential Speaker Series is sponsored by FHSU\u2019s Office of the President and by Fort Hays State students.  <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>BY UNIVERSITY RELATIONS Sarah Thomas is the first woman to officiate a major college football game, the first full-time female NFL game official and, in&hellip; <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[11722],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-49834","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-press-releases"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49834","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=49834"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49834\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":49835,"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49834\/revisions\/49835"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=49834"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=49834"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=49834"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}