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Eight Conferences Form Alliance to Overhaul Women’s College Basketball Officiating

The new consortium places Pualani Spurlock-Welsh in a lead supervisory role to centralize officiating assignments, training and evaluation across the member leagues.

Overview

  • The ACC, Big East, American, Atlantic 10, Ivy League, CAA, Big South and Metro Conference announced the alliance on Monday to coordinate officiating across their leagues.
  • Pualani Spurlock-Welsh was named supervisor for the ACC, Big East and American and will work with supervisors from the other five conferences who will report to her.
  • The conferences said the alliance will recruit and retain referees, create geographically efficient assigning, and expand training, mentorship and evaluation to build a clearer tiered pathway from smaller leagues to power conferences.
  • Leaders emphasized governance and shared oversight but did not publish detailed implementation steps, timelines or metrics for measuring improvements in call accuracy or consistency.
  • The move formalizes a long-running informal arrangement overseen by Debbie Williamson, who retired earlier in 2026, and could change how officials move between mid-major and power-conference games and how crews are developed and evaluated.