NEW YORK — Jen Pawol is about to turn out to be the primary girl to umpire a recreation in Main League Baseball when she works video games this weekend between the Miami Marlins and Atlanta Braves.
Pawol will work the bases in Saturday’s doubleheader at Truist Park and the plate Sunday, MLB mentioned Wednesday.
Pawol, 48, from New Jersey, labored spring coaching video games in 2024 and this yr.
MLB’s transfer comes 28 years after the gender barrier for recreation officers was damaged within the NBA, 10 years after it ended within the NFL and three years after the boys’s soccer World Cup employed a feminine referee.
Pawol in 2024 grew to become the primary girl to umpire huge league spring coaching video games since Ria Cortesio in 2007. Cortesio spent 9 years within the minor leagues, together with the final 5 within the Double-A Southern League, then was launched after the 2007 season.
Pawol was an all-state softball and soccer participant in New Jersey for 3 seasons in every sport at West Milford Excessive Faculty. She went to Hofstra on a softball scholarship and have become a three-time all-conference decide and was on the USA Baseball ladies’s nationwide baseball workforce in 2001.
Pawol received a grasp’s diploma and was residing within the Binghamton space of New York and taking trainer certification courses at Elmira Faculty whereas nonetheless enjoying on the aspect.
“I wasn’t actually glad,” she mentioned final yr. “Coming off of an enormous aggressive profession, simply enjoying domestically, I wasn’t getting my repair. And I bear in mind trying on the umpire and being like, I feel that is it. I received to go for that.”
After umpiring NCAA softball from 2010 to ’16, she attended an MLB umpire tryout camp in 2015, was invited to the Umpire Coaching Academy at Vero Seaside, Florida, and was supplied a job within the Gulf Coast League in 2016.
Violet Palmer grew to become the NBA’s first girl referee when she labored Dallas’ opener at Vancouver on Oct. 31, 1997, and Sarah Thomas was the NFL’s first girl on-field official when she served as line decide for Kansas Metropolis’s recreation at Houston on Sept. 13, 2015.
Stéphanie Frappart of France grew to become the primary girl to referee a males’s World Cup recreation when she labored Germany’s 4-2 group stage win over Costa Rica on Dec. 1, 2022, and Rebecca Walsh grew to become the primary to referee in England’s Premier League when she officiated Burnley’s 2-0 win at Fulham on Dec. 23, 2023.
MLB has 76 full-time employees umpires and makes use of fill-ins on crews for openings created by accidents and holidays.