In 1985, an 11-year-old Kari Seitz and her entire club soccer team were required by their head coach to become certified referees to better understand the laws of the game. Despite having what she called “a trifecta of challenges” – younger, small in stature and female – Seitz stuck with it and eventually traded playing soccer for officiating it.
Four FIFA Women’s World Cups, three Olympic Games and hundreds of matches later, Seitz was inducted into the National Soccer Hall of Fame on May 1, 2026, celebrating her nearly 40 years of service in refereeing.
“[Being inducted] means that the work that I’ve done to help better the sport for others is being recognized,” Seitz said. “It’s really my pleasure to serve the game, and to be inducted in this way is not something I ever thought would be possible, especially as a referee.”
After becoming a referee, Seitz spent the next decade training and developing while also learning and watching other officials. Seitz saw Mexican referee Arturo Brizio Carter at the opening match of the 1994 FIFA World Cup at Soldier Field in Chicago and knew that was where she wanted to be.
Her time came in June 1999 when she received a late-night phone call asking her to replace an official in a FIFA Women's World Cup match the next morning. She flew from San Mateo, Calif., to Boston and handed out three yellow cards and one red in a 1-1 draw between Australia and Ghana.
Seitz appeared in the 2003 FIFA Women’s World Cup before she was selected by Hall of Famer referee Esse Baharmast for her first Olympic match in 2004 in Athens, Greece.
“It was always my dream to go to the Olympics, and the moment Esse Baharmast called me on the phone and told me that it was going to happen was a tearful moment,” she recalled.
Seitz went on to officiate nine matches across four FIFA Women’s World Cups (1999, 2003, 2007, 2011) and six matches at three Olympics (2004, 2008, 2012). She is the only referee, male or female, to do so.
She also spent 15 years refereeing in domestic leagues across the U.S., including Major League Soccer (MLS) and the National Women's Soccer League (NWSL). She officiated the inaugural NWSL Final in Rochester, N.Y., in 2013.
After retiring, Seitz was named FIFA head of women’s refereeing in 2016 where she played a role in women officiating matches for the first time in the 2022 FIFA Men’s World Cup in Qatar. Six female referees were selected for the 2022 World Cup, the same number that will participate in the 2026 World Cup in a few months.
“When the opportunity came to work at FIFA, I knew this was a once in a lifetime chance to change things from the inside, create better support, better opportunities and a clearer path for women referees,” Seitz said during her Hall of Fame induction speech. “During that time, we reached a moment so many people did not believe was possible, that women would officiate at the Men's World Cup. The first time in the 92-year history of the competition, it happened.”
In February of 2024, Seitz became U.S. Soccer’s first Vice President of Refereeing where she continues to lead the Federation’s Referee Department in the accelerated initiative to grow the number of high-quality referees across all levels of the game.
