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SACRAMENTO — As each winning basketball team stormed the floor in celebration, another “team” slipped off the Golden 1 Center floor and into the tunnel this weekend.

Referees can draw the ire from a crowd for 32 minutes, but when the final buzzer sounds, they seem to dissipate into thin air like a magic act. However, on this particular weekend in Sacramento for the CIF State basketball championships, six officiating crews weren’t just running off the floor when the games finished.

They were running into the history books.

For the first time in CIF State history, every girls basketball state championship game was officiated by an all-female crew.

Danielle Milburn, Wendy Tomita-Yu and Olivia Larkin were assigned to the Division V final. Devorah Robinson-Ashe, Amanda Clark and Kim Bly were assigned the Division IV final. Julia Allender, Makenzie Campbell and Sarah Heise were assigned the Division III final.

Chris Cover, from left, Darlene Hargrove and Sarah Ely were assigned to referee the CIF State Division I girls basketball final Saturday, March 12, 2022, in Sacramento. (Tarek Fattal/SCNG)

Amanda Baker, Alissa Campanero, and Keesha Pringle were assigned the Division II final. Darlene Hargrove, Sarah Ely and Chris Cover were assigned the Division I final. And Karina Tovar, Nathalie Logue and Melody Dysim were assigned the Open Division final. Ali Quilici and Tami Cherolis were alternates.

Logistically, it hasn’t been easy to make the historical weekend happen. It’s been eight years in the making, and finally, 2022 was the year.

“The challenge has been getting enough female officials from Northern California,” CIF NorCal basketball officials assigner Harry Schrauth said. “There’s finally enough to do it. It’s great because we need more female officials in our game.”

Schrauth said he has 270 officials and just 17 of them are women. Nine of them worked the CIF State championships over the weekend. Although the number is small, it’s because of a good problem.

“The higher levels want more female officials, too,” said Schrauth, who’s been an assigner for 20 years. “The female officials move up fast, doing junior college, college, and even professional games.”

Shrauth’s best example is Sha’rae Mitchell, a Sacramento native who refereed the CIF State championships in 2018 before working NBA G-League games and was recently called up in January to work an NBA game between the Detroit Pistons and San Antonio Spurs. It made Mitchell the 15th woman in NBA history to referee a regular-season game.

Mark Nanamura, the CIF SoCal assigner, doesn’t have the issue the north does when it comes to numbers. Nanamura says of the 400 officials in the south, roughly 60 to 70 are women.

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Southern California is the home of the trailblazer for female officials. Compton native Violet Palmer became the first woman to referee an NBA game in 1997, which made her the first female official to reach the highest competitive tier in any major U.S. professional sports league. She retired in 2016.

“It’s hard to find female officials, they transition up so fast. But, it’s satisfying to be able to make this weekend happen,” Nanamura said.