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Famous Like Me > Actress > P > Violet Palmer

Profile of Violet Palmer on Famous Like Me

 
Name: Violet Palmer  
   
Also Know As:
   
Date of Birth: 7th September 1900
   
Place of Birth: Flint, Michigan, USA
   
Profession: Actress
 
 
From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia

Violet Palmer (born 1964), is an African American NBA and WNBA basketball referee.

Biography

Palmer is a native of Compton, California, the same neighborhood where Serena and Venus Williams lived as small children.

Palmer played the position of point guard at Cal-Poly in Pomona, where she helped her team conquer the 1985 and 1986 NCAA division II women's national championship.

After years of refereeing experience at various levels, including NBA pre-season and exhibition games, Palmer was offered a opportunity to officiate at the NCAA's division I male tournament in 1996. She accepted, but, later on, the NCAA retired the offer due to unspecified reasons. Palmer believes it was because the NCAA's male basketball program's group of referees consisted exclusively of male members.

In October of 1997, Palmer and Denise Kantner made history, when the NBA announced they would become the first women referees to be signed by the NBA. Palmer became the first female to officiate an NBA game in history when, on October 31, 1997 (the NBAs opening night), she officiated the game between the local Vancouver Grizzlies and the Dallas Mavericks, in British Columbia, Canada.

Her achievement was received with mixed feelings: while many magazines, such as Ebony and other, mostly basketball dedicated publications, held her achievement highly, some NBA players, such as Dennis Scott, expressed their worries or just plain disgust at having her and Kantner officiate NBA games. Scott in particular was worried that she would feel verbally or pshysically abused by other NBA players. Not all NBA players expressed worry or ill feelings for her, however; many accepted her presence at NBA courts almost immediately after she began working at the NBA.

Palmer has since officiated countless NBA games as well as WNBA ones. She has established the "Violet Palmer's Official Camp" in 2001; the camp runs yearly from July 9 to July 11 and operated for the fourth year in a row in 2004.

Regardless of her gender, she is almost universally considered among media and fans as a poor referee by NBA standards.

This content from Wikipedia is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article Violet Palmer