{"id":50837,"date":"2019-11-14T16:41:23","date_gmt":"2019-11-14T22:41:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/?p=50837"},"modified":"2019-11-14T16:41:24","modified_gmt":"2019-11-14T22:41:24","slug":"fort-hays-state-freshman-thrilled-with-life-changing-opportunities-early-in-her-college-career","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/?p=50837","title":{"rendered":"Fort Hays State freshman thrilled with life-changing opportunities early in her college career"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

By Diane Gasper-O\u2019Brien
<\/strong> University Relations and Marketing
<\/em> Emma Ellerbee finds herself thinking, \u201cNo way this is happening,\u201d a lot these days.

She shakes her head and tears roll down her cheeks as she talks about life-changing experiences at Fort Hays State University that could lead to her dream career. And she\u2019s a freshman education major still a month away from the completion of her first semester.

First, Emma found what she thought was the ideal part-time job while looking for work her first couple weeks in Hays from Hastings, Neb.

She ran across an online ad for high school referees through the FHSU intramurals department. An avid sports fan whose dream was to coach major college football someday, Emma thought it would be the perfect opportunity to be on the field and learn more about the game at the same time.

Then one weekend when her grandparents were visiting from Hastings, Emma\u2019s grandfather spotted a poster in the Memorial Union with Sarah Thomas\u2019 photo on it. Thomas, the NFL\u2019s first female official, was going to be the speaker for this year\u2019s FHSU Presidential Series on Nov. 12.

It\u2019s no secret in Emma\u2019s family that Thomas has been her idol for several years, so her grandfather stopped to check out the poster.

\u201cIt says she\u2019s coming to FHSU to speak,\u201d Richard Johnson said. \u201cNo way,\u201d was Emma\u2019s reply.

Emma promptly jotted the event down in her calendar to keep that day in November open. It couldn\u2019t come soon enough. She was one of the first to take a seat during a question-answer session with Thomas and students in the Department of Health and Human Performance Department and the intramurals program.

Following Thomas\u2019 visit with several student groups, Emma approached Thomas to take a photo with her. They got to chatting about sharing similar goals. Before she knew it, Emma had Thomas\u2019 cell phone number, and Thomas promised to keep in touch and offered any help she could to Emma.

Emma was so moved by the afternoon\u2019s events, she bypassed a night meeting in her residence hall to attend that night\u2019s public presentation by Thomas.

Thomas entertained the audience with stories of challenges faced as a female in a male-dominated job, anecdotes of her career and balancing her profession with her family life with three children.

At least twice during the presentation, Emma shook her head in disbelief.

The first was when Thomas talked about her mother being a home economics teacher while growing up. Emma\u2019s mom, Kate Portenier, teaches family and consumer sciences (formerly home ec) at Adams Central High School in Hastings.

Another was when Thomas flashed up on the screen two of the quotes by which she lives. They are also two of Emma\u2019s favorites: \u201cBe yourself, because everyone else is already taken\u201d and \u201cComparison is the thief of joy.\u201d

Emma thought \u2013 you guessed it \u2013 \u201cNo way!\u201d

\u201cWith all the similarities, I just felt this connection,\u201d Emma said. \u201cIt was super, super inspiring \u2013 just an amazing experience.\u201d

So inspiring, in fact, that after sleeping on it, Emma decided the next day that she was going to pursue NFL refereeing, with coaching still available as a backup plan.

\u201cIt was like she hit me with a truck, it impacted me so much,\u201d Emma said. \u201cI love the game and love being on the field. I am so excited about keeping in touch with her.\u201d

Emma\u2019s passion for football began at a young age when she watched NFL and major college games on TV with her dad, A.J. Ellerbee. She was raised a Kansas City Chiefs fan, and her love for the game grew with each passing year.

By the time Emma was in middle school, she joined her school\u2019s football team in Omaha, Neb., and played middle linebacker. Similarly, Thomas talked about playing on boys\u2019 sports teams growing up.

Emma didn\u2019t play high school football, but she still stayed involved. In an effort to bring the student body closer together, she created an organization calledthe Red Rowdieswho created themes and dressed up for games to cheer on the athletes in different sports.

But her first love is football.

Sometimes in the fall, Emma can be found watching the sport either on TV or live six days a week. Now she has a goal of playing an even bigger part in her favorite sport.

It was almost too much to wrap her mind around this week. Was this really happening, or was it all a dream. Emma and Thomas have already texted back and forth, and Thomas sent a tweet about the two meeting to the NFL.

Wednesday morning, Emma woke up to reality. By noon, she was already working on her plan of following in the footsteps of the NFL\u2019s first female referee, who was nearly as stoked about helping a certain 18-year-old college freshman at FHSU as Emma herself.

\u201cThe peak for me is to get to meet people just like me,\u201d Thomas said.

That she did at Fort Hays State. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Diane Gasper-O\u2019Brien University Relations and Marketing Emma Ellerbee finds herself thinking, \u201cNo way this is happening,\u201d a lot these days. She shakes her head… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":50838,"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-50837","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-press-releases"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/tigermedianet.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/11\/Feature-dgo-Female-referees.jpg?fit=825%2C860&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50837","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=50837"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50837\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":50839,"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50837\/revisions\/50839"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/50838"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=50837"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=50837"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=50837"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}