For the first time, the NFL will have a Black female game official

“It didn’t really hit me until just now,” Chaka said Friday throughout an look on NBC’s “Today” present. “When I saw the introduction, I’m like, ‘This is really real,’ because this is just something that we’re just always taught to work hard for. Sometimes we just don’t take time to stop and smell our own roses.

“I’ve just been grinding for so long at this, it’s just an honor to be able to join the National Football League.”

Since 2014, Chaka has participated in the NFL’s Officiating Development Program, by which the league works with faculty soccer officers to find out in the event that they have means to reach the skilled ranks. The program’s referees work video games throughout offseason minicamps and likewise officiate a preseason game. Chaka has been a soccer official since 2006, when she started her profession at the highschool stage. In 2013, she and Sarah Thomas — who in 2015 became the NFL’s first female official and this 12 months grew to become the first woman to officiate in a Super Bowl — grew to become the first pair of female officers to work the similar FBS bowl game (the Fight Hunger Bowl between Washington and BYU).

“Maia’s years of hard work, dedication and perseverance — including as part of the NFL Officiating Development Program — have earned her a position as an NFL official,” Troy Vincent, the NFL’s director of soccer operations, stated in a league assertion. “As we celebrate Women’s History Month, Maia is a trailblazer as the first Black female official and inspires us toward normalizing women on the football field.”

Chaka informed “Today” that she discovered of her appointment on Monday throughout a name with Wayne Mackie, the NFL’s vice chairman of officiating analysis and growth.

“He goes, ‘Welcome to the National Football League,’ and I just went nuts,” Chaka stated. “I asked him, ‘Hey are you punking me, you’ve gotta be kidding me,’ because I’ve been at it for so long, I just never thought the day would come. I just enjoyed working.”