20 March 2019 

International Women’s Day is celebrated on 8 March every year and is a focal point in the movement of women’s rights.  This year’s campaign theme of #BalanceforBetter is a call-to-action for driving gender balance across the world. 

Athletics prides itself on being a gender balanced sport and our officials play a major part in achieving this, where currently there are 59% male and 41% female officials in the UK.  In support of International Women’s Day 2019, throughout March, we will feature Officials across the UK to celebrate them and their commitment to athletics.  

Katie Wilson

What is your role as an official?
I am an official is a track judge.

How long have you been officiating?
I have been officiating as a level 1 official for about two months but whilst qualifying I have been an official for approximately one year.

What inspired you to become an official?
My school teacher inspired me to become an official, as I was always part of the athletics team but when I got injured my teacher spoke to me about officiating and I took it and have liked to officiate ever since.

What would you say to anyone wanting to get into officiating?
I would say just do it, I’m only 16 and officiating so many more young people should do it, you meet at lot of new people and there are plenty of opportunities.

What has been the highlight of your officiating career?
My highlight of my officiating career would be being selected to be young official for Cheshire at the English Schools Athletics in Birmingham last year, it was my first big event as I had only been to small local school ones before. I met so many great people who taught me a lot and I learnt so much in the two days I officiated for.

What can we do as a sport to achieve a #BetterBalance in officiating?

As a sport to achieve #BalanceforBetter, I would say that athletics needs to target the younger generation to become officials and target females in particular, as there are 18% more male officials and as a young female official I would like to see that percentage decrease as I feel like women should be equally presented as men.

Find out more about International Women’s Day here. 

If you want to get involved in officiating, find out more information here.