June Courteau has always loved the game of basketball, and she dedicated her professional career to improving the game by recruiting and mentoring officials for girls’ and women’s basketball.

Courteau started officiating college women’s basketball in 1968, and in more than 40 years she officiated 20 NCAA Division I tournaments, 12 Final Fours, five NCAA Division I championship games and many conference championships. She worked as an official with the WNBA from its inception in 1997 until 2010, and worked 13 championship finals, two All-Star games and the 2004 WNBA versus Team USA game at Radio City Music Hall.

Before the WNBA was started, Courteau officiated overseas in the International Basketball Federation. She officiated several national tournaments, the Pan-American games, and served as an official at the 1992 Olympics in Barcelona.

While she was still on the officiating circuit, Courteau started mentoring new officials and building tools to help train up and coming officials to ensure that women’s basketball could be played at the highest possible levels. She was a review coordinator for the Women’s Basketball Officiating Consortium, an observer, trainer and mentor for the WNBA, and was an independent contractor for the NCAA where she produced training videos and served as a clinician at officiating clinics.

During the last five years of her professional career, Courteau held the position of the National Coordinator of Officials for Women’s Basketball for the NCAA. She was responsible for the nationwide training of officials and assigning the referees for the NCAA National Tournament, also known as March Madness.

Courteau has been recognized at the highest levels of basketball for her work to improve the game. She was the 1989 Naismith Award Recipient, and in 1990 she was named the Atlantic Coast Conference Official of the Year. She was inducted into the Winona State Athletics Hall of Fame in 1991, received the WBCA Lifetime Achievement Award in 2013 and was inducted into the Women’s Basketball Hall of Fame in 2016 before retiring three years later from the officiating profession.

While doing all of her work with basketball, Courteau also held many jobs over the course of her career, including a speech and communications teacher, recreation director, program director for Caring for Children and she served as the co-owner and operator of two different officiating training camps from 1987-1998.

Courteau said when she retired that she put the game of basketball first because “it deserved nothing less,” and girls and women at all levels of basketball have benefitted from her dedication.