How Karina Tovar, the NFL's first Latina ref, became a trailblazer

LOS ANGELES -- Karina Tovar, the NFL's first Latina referee, nervously recalls the moment even while she tells the story years later. She is sitting in her parents' den on an exceptionally hot Mother's Day in Southern California, and her usually sharp and unwavering voice changes slightly in tone. It's almost as if she realizes this was the pivotal instant, the day that put her firmly on the road to making history.

At a refereeing camp during her days as a high school official, Tovar was in the middle of calling a simulated game while under the watchful eye of Gerry Austin, best known for his 26 years as an NFL referee and officiating three Super Bowls. At that time, Austin was Conference USA's head of officiating and one of the camp's instructors.

On a contested pass play, Tovar made the signal for an incomplete pass.

"[Austin's] standing right behind me and in front of everybody he tells me that's a completed pass, and I'm just freaking out. We are not supposed to argue with the instructors," Tovar says, clasping her hands. "For the life of me I saw that ball hit the floor and I'm just standing there, [and I said] 'Sir, this ball is incomplete.' I think like 30 seconds pass by, and he tells me, 'I'm just messing with you.'"

One can argue that Austin's gentle razzing served as a welcome to the big-time moment for Tovar, and she has made the most of it. The referee who began her second NFL season earlier this month fostered an early and deep love of football into a pioneering path that she hopes others like her will follow. It's a fitting calling for the 34-year-old first-generation American and daughter of Mexican immigrants, who likes to say that she learned the rules of football before she could speak English.

Following the camp, Tovar received an invitation from Austin to officiate Conference USA games, beginning with the 2019 season, and paving her way into an eventual historic entry into the NFL. She became just the fifth woman to officiate in the league's 106-year history and is one of two on refereeing crews this season along with Sarah Thomas, who opened the doors for female officials in the NFL.

"When I started coming up, there wasn't a lot of women in these college clinics, so when I get to go and now I'm the one doing teaching and giving back information to learn, it's very special," says Tovar, who discussed her journey with ESPN for Hispanic Heritage Month.

Football over cartoons

As a child in the mid-90s growing up in Southern California, Tovar noticed a pattern every weekend. Her Saturday morning cartoons would eventually give way to a game that, at first, provoked curiosity if not a bit of annoyance. As time went on, she became less interested in whatever kids' programming was on, instead finding herself drawn to the hours of televised college football that followed.

"I didn't know much about it, and it was almost to me like a chessboard, the ultimate game of chess with the highest level of athleticism," Tovar says. "Little by little, I began to love the game, and college football is really where I started [watching] at an early age."

The feeling of being part of the action had always felt natural to Tovar.

"I was just an active kid," Tovar says. "Where we grew up, there were a lot of boys around. I was just always active with our neighbors, and I think from there I just went straight into playing sports, playing soccer, playing basketball. I remember my parents would always just encourage me to try what I wanted and encourage me to keep getting better."

Her father, Salvador Tovar Sr., was born in the north-central Mexican state of Zacatecas. Her mother, Carmen Tovar, grew up in Puebla, a two-hour drive east of Mexico City. They settled in Los Angeles, which has the largest concentration of inhabitants who identify as having Mexican heritage in the world.

Football might have served as Karina's introduction to sports, yet it was basketball and the Los Angeles Lakers that next captivated the Tovar household. She and her brother, Salvador Jr., grew up idolizing Kobe Bryant and Shaquille O'Neal, the superstar Lakers pairing who also inspired Karina to play basketball through her teens.

After enrolling at Cal State Northridge, Tovar began to officiate high school basketball. A short time later, she received an opportunity to give football a shot, bringing her back to the sport that initially caught her eye.

"I saw potential in her and I saw that she gave 100 percent to sports. She was very gutsy and very dedicated," her father says. "But I didn't expect her to make it to the big leagues, so it was a great joy, amazing."

Breaking barriers

When Karina was growing up, the thought of turning her love of football into a lifelong career seemed overly optimistic. It wasn't until 1997 that the NFL had its first woman serve as an executive, when Amy Trask became the then-Oakland Raiders' CEO in 1997. The league's first female coach arrived almost two decades later, when Jennifer Welter joined the Arizona Cardinals during the 2015 preseason.

The same year, Thomas made history as the first woman to be a full-time NFL official; Shannon Eastin remains the first woman to work an NFL game, officiating temporarily while the 2012 NFL referee lockout ran its course. Coincidentally, Austin also gave Thomas an opportunity when he hired her in 2006 to work college games.

The NFL estimates that over 1.04 million high schoolers play football in the U.S., and 2.4 million participants under the age of 17 participate in flag football. Such massive numbers require a healthy flow of referees to call games across all 50 states. Youth football referees usually start out as volunteers, receiving little or no pay for their participation.

Ultimately, Tovar's long-term dedication to the craft amounted to a leap of faith, with no guarantee that it could become a sustained career. She was already working games at the grade school level when Thomas broke through into the NFL.

Her eye for detail pushed her toward officiating as her sole profession. After earning her degree from Cal State Northridge, she balanced calling games with a budding family life. She married and gave birth to two sons, who are now school-aged.

For her family, trips to football fields and stadiums or weekends without her became routine.

"Every game was date night. We would go to see it, yeah, to watch and hang out," says Randy del Cid, Tovar's husband. "It's definitely a challenge. [We] communicate a lot, we have a family calendar, we are always calendaring on trips. We live close to her parents; they help a lot. We wouldn't be able to do so much if we didn't have them, but it's really about getting on the same page."

Years of calling high school and junior college games piqued Tovar's interest in pushing forward, though she insists she never set the NFL as a goal. Regardless, referees who want to continue to move up the ranks are encouraged to attend refereeing camps.

"At that level, you just want to pursue experience as much as you can," Tovar says. "There are training camps, two- or three-day clinics you can go to, and it's an intense sunup to sundown thing where it's football on the field, studying football in the classroom, and you start to pursue those avenues throughout the college levels."

First brushes with history

Each NFL game averages about 153 plays, and according to the league, referees get 98.9% of calls right on the field. That level of accuracy requires any refereeing prospect to ascend to a level of otherworldly precision. Over the league's history, different eras have required officiating crews to increase in numbers to keep up with players' growing size and athleticism. The three-men groups of the NFL's early days have given way to today's crews of seven on-field officials -- which doesn't include those in the replay booth.

Currently, 121 officials are split among 17 crews. Tovar, who is a field judge on Clete Blakeman's crew, stays sharp throughout the year by adopting a routine that includes regular gym work and jiu-jitsu classes in the offseason.

"She is a very hard worker, so she is always working in the gym, trying to stay at peak performance because the NFL refs, they have to keep up with the best players running down the field," del Cid says.

As a field judge, Tovar's duties include overseeing goal line plays, monitoring the play clock for potential delay of game calls, aerial plays for potential pass interference penalties and confirming catches.

It's no surprise then that after she waved off Austin on an incomplete call, he recommended her for that position at Conference USA.

"As you want to move up, you're essentially investing into yourself, and people like Mr. Austin, they all go to these clinics, and they are watching everybody," Tovar says. "They are watching to see how coachable you are more than anything; they don't expect you to know everything, they expect you to take feedback and apply it. I've always really enjoyed that process."

Tovar spent two years at Conference USA before becoming the first woman official to work full time in the ACC. She then ventured into the Pac-12 to call games. In total, she spent five years calling FBS games before making the transition to the pro game.

In 2024, Tovar was hired by the UFL, the spring pro league that resulted from the merger between the XFL and the USFL. It was during her only season there she got the call from the NFL, turning what was once essentially a pipe dream into reality.

"The day I got the call is a blur," Tovar says. "It was somebody in the officiating office, and he asked me 'What do you need to work on?' At the time we were working with hybrid college and pro rules because we were working in the UFL. And he told me, 'Well, you better get into that NFL rulebook. Welcome to the National Football League.'"

From that moment, Tovar turned up a notch the general approach to her craft: Get better today, and tomorrow be better. She felt confident that she could handle the NFL's speed because of the training she had received. Nevertheless, she seized every opportunity to put in more work.

"I would go do Rams practices, Chargers practices," she says. "I worked USC, UCLA, so I was up and down everywhere, going back to that support from Randy, just saying, 'Babe, I'm going to go work a 10 a.m. Chargers [game]."

The next generation

In March, Tovar traveled to Monterrey, Mexico, to lead a referee camp for the first time, weeks after her first NFL season ended. The heft of the moment was not lost on her as she shared her story with a group in the country where her parents were born.

As for the NFL, the league's doors are more open than ever to gender equality. Of its 32 franchises, 12 are owned either solely or in part by women. Compare that to a quarter century ago, when the Cardinals, Chicago Bears and the then-St. Louis Rams were the only teams that featured a woman as owner. Ten years after Welter debuted as the first woman to coach, the league now has 15. Autumn Lockwood became the first Black woman to coach in a Super Bowl with the Philadelphia Eagles in 2023, and in February she became the first to win it as a member of their strength and conditioning team.

The NFL's female pioneers have laid down a firm road for those who wish to follow. This is the motivating factor that led Tovar to Mexico with the intent of helping Latinos regardless of gender to reach the top.