Making the Decisions: A History of Women in Ice Hockey Refereeing

When people talk about the trailblazers and barrier breakers in refereeing, they often mention Katie Guay, Kirsten Welsh or Laura Schmidlein. They all had their first time, but just like today’s players who are often called pioneers, the foundation for their first time was laid long before they stepped on the ice. In fact, long before they were born.

The battle for space on the ice for women is not only a battle between players, but also between female referees.

In 1972, a group of officials called games in Indianapolis, who “were considered the first ice hockey referees in the country,” according to the Indian’s The Star Press in December 1972. One of the women, Niegel Allen, became an accredited official with the Amateur Hockey Association of the United States while working in the Indianapolis Youth Hockey League. The women had all been figure skaters for years before becoming hockey officials.

“We had to relearn how to skate,” Allen said. “If you’re pushing off on figure skates, for example, it’s different. But I think hockey skates are easier.”

Allen was one of four women who trained at the Mid-American Hockey Association clinic in Bowling Green, Ohio, along with Irma Morris and Phyllis Minott of Indianapolis and Jan Galloway of Pittsburgh.

In the United States, Mona Bouthillier may be the predecessor. She began refereeing hockey games in Vermont in the late 1960s or early 1970s.

In the 1970s, stories surfaced across North America in which female referees were rarely mentioned. In Edmonton, it was 19-year-old Barbara Mandrusiak who opened the Canadian Press with a sexist speech describing the referee in 1973 as “Long dark hair, great legs, a beautiful smile — not exactly qualities you usually associate with a budding hockey referee.” That same year, The Hamilton Spectator ran a story about a trio of women — Brenda Lisson, Theresa Eaton and Sandy Chapman — who officiated in Burlington. In 1977, it was Dana Williams in Salt Lake City, Utah. In 1978, it was Candy Kotcher in Saginaw, Michigan, or Doreen Borger in Edmonton in 1979.

Women refereed hockey in a variety of roles and leagues across North America in the 1970s and 1980s, including newsmakers like Kotcher of Michigan and Toni Onichuck of Ontario, who in 1982 openly discussed her goals to referee in the NHL. Onichuck, then 23, had refereed the first Canadian Women’s National Championships in Brantford, Ontario in 1982, and had gone on to referee at all levels of minor hockey. But it was the NHL she wanted.

“It takes a long time to get to that level. But if someone can keep it up, who knows?” she wondered.

“I have to be in the right place at the right time,” Onichuk said of the potential to referee in the NHL. “I don’t think the NHL will discriminate against women.”

But progress was slow.

In 1990, at the inaugural World Championships, Deb Maybury stepped onto the ice to officiate the first-ever IIHF-sanctioned women’s game. A longtime player, including a 1987 Women’s World Hockey Tournament appearance, she opted to remain in the game on the other end of the calls.

“I went from playing, to playing and refereeing, to playing, refereeing and coaching, but at that point I had to pick and choose how I was going to achieve what I wanted to achieve. I knew I was going to be the best I could be as an official,” she said. “It didn’t matter if I was out, it’s a different game, there’s no accolades, you get called names, you get questioned, you really have to have a strong core.”

When she first traveled to the women’s national championships in 1988, officials were not paid. There were other women who served as linesmen at the world championships, but Maybury made history as the first woman in history to referee a world championship match.

“…(T)here was a mix of men and women, but I was the only female referee,” Maybury explained of the first Worlds. “There were certainly others who could have refereed at that time. There were people who really fought to get women there to referee, but the powers that be only wanted male officials, they didn’t think women should be doing that.”

After Onichuck’s comments and women breaking into major tournaments like Maybury, it took years until 1994 for a woman to officiate a professional men’s game at any level. That woman is also often forgotten when it comes to women in hockey. In 1994, 22-year-old Heather McDaniel became the first woman to referee a professional men’s hockey game in the Central Hockey League.

McDaniel faced plenty of sexist comments during her time on the ice. “There’s been plenty of them… You know, ‘Go back to the kitchen where you belong.’ ‘Why don’t you bake a pie?’ ‘Hey, this isn’t ballet, you know.’ That kind of thing,” she said in an interview with The Boston Globe on Oct. 30, 1994. The NHL, however, did not close the possibility of McDaniel or any other woman ever joining its ranks as an official.

“I’m a firm believer that a woman can be a referee,” NHL executive Bryan Lewis told the Globe. “And I think it would be a lot easier for a woman to be a referee than, say, a lineswoman — simply because calling lines means you have to break up fights. Could a woman handle the pressure of refereeing? Absolutely. Could she make the quick decisions? Absolutely. Can she skate? My son took power skating lessons from a woman, and there are women who can beat a lot of men. So, why not?”

In 1992, Sandra Dombrowski became the first woman to officiate a gold medal game at a world championship, a feat she repeated in 1994 and 1997. She later became a referee supervisor for both the Swiss Ice Hockey Federation and the IIHF, and in 2023, Dombrowski became the first woman to be inducted into the IIHF Hall of Fame as a referee. But even in international women’s competition, progress has been slow.

With the 1998 Winter Olympics approaching, many women aspired to be on the ice in Nagano, Japan not only as players, but also as officials. 1998 was a significant year for women not only in hockey, but also in the role of referee and linesman.

That tournament saw several women take the ice to officiate, including referees Laurie Taylor-Bolton and Marina Zenk, both of whom had officiated at the 1994 World Championships, as well as other international events leading up to the Games.

Zenk went on to cover the first-ever gold medal match between Canada and the U.S. at the Olympics that year. The tournament also featured several other women, including Debra Parece, Evonne Young, Manuela Groeger-Schneider, Sandra Dombrowski, Johanna Kuisma, Sigrid Nonas, Victoria Renfer-Kale and Isabelle Giguere.

Zenk had been a player herself, playing at Seneca College with a famous teammate, Angela James, who had encouraged her to pursue a career in officiating. That was the beginning. After Nagano, Zenk joined Hockey Canada as the organization’s first development coordinator, responsible for women in officiating.

Today, women are breaking through at all levels of hockey, from Junior A to professional leagues in North America and Europe, and at all levels of international play. And while those firsts—whether it’s Katie Guay becoming the first woman to call an AHL game or Kirsten Welsh becoming the first woman to call lines in the OHL and AHL in 2021—are crucial steps toward seeing women regularly call NHL games, more women are calling elite professional hockey games on a regular basis. With the launch of the PWHL, which primarily used AHL officials in its inaugural season, more women are regularly calling elite professional hockey. When the puck dropped on the first-ever game on New Year’s Day 2024, Lacey Senuk was one of two referees and Erin Zach was one of two line judges.

There have been many important firsts in recent years, but none would have been possible without the many women who covered hockey games more than 50 years earlier.

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