In the old days, Yvonde Lewis used to tuck her hair up into her cap, shoving it in as far as it would go. She just wanted to blend in.Then she would stand on the sidelines, working high school football games in Houston as a head linesman, and listen to the young football players,
"Is that he or a she?"
"I don't know, ask ..."
"I'm not going to ask, you ask."
But Lewis hasn't bothered with her "disguise", as she called it, in a long time.
"I didn't want people to know I was a woman, I didn't want that attention," Lewis said. "I don't do that anymore."
Lewis worked as an official in her first FCS college football game on Sept. 19, working the sidelines at the Texas College-Texas Southern game. She is the first woman in the history of the Southwestern Athletic Conference (SWAC) to officiate. She will not be the only one.
Sebrina Brunson will take her turn early next month. Brunson is already established as a regular part of officiating crews in the Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference.
Lewis and Brunson are among the five women working as FBS and FCS officials in the country. Three of them work in MEAC, another in Conference USA.
Brunson has had moments than Lewis can relate to, shared experiences with coaches and athletes who have never seen a woman wearing the stripes before.
"Sometimes the kids call you 'sir' and then they change to 'ma'am,' " Brunson said. "But they don't challenge you. Your presentation means a lot."
Lewis played basketball and volleyball at Prairie View A &M in Texas and returned to Houston, her hometown.
She was working part time as a radio show host, talking about real estate and while she would sit in the studio preparing for her show, the sports talk show would be on the air. Lewis was intrigued by the conversation.
She went to the show's host and asked him whether she might be able to bring a couple of her girlfriends and talk sports during the show.
"I think at first, his reaction was, 'What do y'all know about sports?' " Lewis said.
But Lewis talked her way on to the air and her show became a local hit.
Lewis hosted her show for three years, but said she was looking for something new when she went to watch her nephew play a pee-wee football game one Saturday afternoon and wasn't impressed.
"The officials were terrible and I feel like I know football in and out and I thought I could do it," Lewis said. "I called up the Web site and called the league."
She moved from youth football, to JV games and varsity games. Lewis said it took her three years to convince local high school sports officials to let her work a varsity game. She also began attending officiating camps. Her passion was born and her skin thickened.
"It gets better and better," Lewis said. "When I first started, it was tough. It's rougher than radio and radio had me crying some days. Do I really want people to criticize me, put my character on the line and have to prove who I am all the time? For a while, it was a really hard battle to blow all the negativity out.
"I'm not in it to break any records," Lewis said. "I love it."
Brunson feels the same way.
"The more I grasped the mechanics and the rules, the more I liked it," Brunson said.
Brunson, who works as an adult probation officer in Georgia, also started officiating at her son's youth games, moving up to high school games in Florida. She eventually began working semi-pro games."Those were hard," Brunson said. "They were not very accepting or very respectful."
Brunson attended the MEAC camp in 2001. She remembers when she got the call to do her first college game.
"I had to put them on hold and do a little happy dance," Brunson said. "It was thrilling."
Harold Mitchell, the director of officiating for the SWAC, said his standards for the women are the same as for the men who work in his conference.
And he hopes the way they are treated the same by coaches and players.
"I'd be naïve to think that being a female officials is going to be the same as being a male official," Mitchell said. "They have to work just as hard, probably harder than the men. But I'm not worried about that because Yvonde and Sebrina work harder than anybody to be better and I'm betting on that."
He said Lewis earned strong reviews for her first game.
"I wouldn't say I'm surprised, but I'm very pleased," Mitchell said.
Both women want to take their careers to the NFL.
Lewis said she knows it's going to be "1000 percent hard."
"But I'm up for it," Lewis said.
