El Paso woman to ref basketball at 2024 Paris Olympics

EL PASO, Texas ( KTSM ) — The 2024 Paris Olympics are officially underway, and while there are several Borderland athletes competing in the Games , El Paso’s Blanca Burns will be officiating the men’s and women’s basketball competition.

Burns, who was born in Mexico and moved to El Paso when she was 5 years old, is one of 30 referees who were selected from a pool of 40 to officiate in the Paris Olympic Games. She is one of seven female officials at the event, which is an increase from the five who called games at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.

Back in 2021, Burns became the first Mexican-born, female referee to officiate an NBA game in a matchup between the Utah Jazz and the San Antonio Spurs. She even got an earful from legendary coach Gregg Popovich that night.

Burns played on the Montwood High School girls varsity basketball team as a sophomore, before moving to Oklahoma with her family. She went on to play collegiately, which is where her basketball career took a turn.

“Like any other college student, I was struggling a little bit financially,” said Burns in an interview with KTSM in 2022 . “My coach told all my teammates and I that they were looking for referees at the YMCA. He told us it would be a good opportunity, it’s not bad money, and I went for it. I started 3-year-olds at the YMCA.”

Burns went from officiating grade school games to Division I men’s basketball in less than a decade. She even had the opportunity to return to her hometown to officiate a UTEP game at the Don Haskins Center in 2022 in front of family and friends. Now she’s fulfilling her lifelong dream of representing Mexico at the international level and inspiring the next generation of Latin American women.

Burns adding in her 2022 interview with KTSM, “My only goal was to make it a reality for other females — who are also minorities — who are going to come behind me. One day, I hope they see me out there and say, ‘If she can do it, I can do it.”

The job comes with criticism, naturally, but Burns has been proving people wrong her entire career.

“The reality is, is some people might think when they look at a female in a man’s game, they might think, ‘I’m not sure she can handle it.’ So I’m working hard to do a good job,” said Burns, again from her 2022 interview. “I want to make sure I prove all those people who are doubting females, prove them wrong.”

Men’s basketball at the 2024 Olympics will begin on Saturday, while the women will tip-off on Sunday in Paris.

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