Maia Chaka had a hard time believing that she’d ever officiate an NFL game. Not that she didn’t know the rules of the game or wasn’t competent at making the right calls. It’s just that she was one of thousands of football officials at the high school or college level around the country, and most of them never put on a striped shirt during an NFL game.

“I just never thought the day would come,” she told NBC’s Today Show back in 2021.

Turns out, Chaka wasn’t just like any other official after all, and eventually, her day did come. Chaka became the NFL’s first Black woman to officiate a game, and only the third woman to ever be an NFL official, having been tapped in 2015 for the league’s Officiating Development Program. She was one of only 21 participants at the time, and one of only two women. The other was Sarah Thomas, who went on to be the first full-time female NFL official. Shannon Eastin was the first woman to officiate a game in the NFL in 2021.

A phys ed teacher from Virginia, Chaka started officiating local high school games before moving on to NCAA games, primarily in the Pac-12 and Conference USA, and the former XFL, now known as the United Football League after a 2023 merger with the USFL. She and Thomas were the first women to referee in NCAA FBS division bowl games in 2014.

Thomas would get the call first, moving up to the NFL in 2015, while Chaka’s call came in 2021. She officiated her first game on Sept. 12 of that year, a New York Jets victory over the Carolina Panthers.

Chaka refereed for three seasons in the NFL before announcing that she wouldn’t return for the 2023 season.