Paramedic Preparing For Fourth Season Refereeing WNBL

Rosebud paramedic Bianca Vernon is no stranger to making decisions under pressure.

Outside of her paramedic work, she is an experienced basketball referee, calling plays for the Women's National Basketball League (WNBL).

She was nine years old when she first hit the basketball court and 17 when she first picked up the whistle.

Back then, refereeing was simply a way to earn some pocket money to pay for her basketball games as a player.

But now, Bianca is gearing up for her fourth year as a WNBL referee and working towards a spot on the men's court, on the National Basketball League (NBL) refereeing panel.

"Early on, I didn't have any idea where it would take me," Bianca said.

As a junior, Bianca was part of the Southern Peninsula Basketball Association, which in turn was part of Basketball Victoria Country.

"They gave me some great opportunities to referee the country championships tournaments, and that was where I started enjoying the higher level refereeing," she said.

"I was awarded some gold medal games which I thought was cool and I started thinking I could take refereeing a bit further.

"I was able to be selected as a Victorian representative for the junior national champs and that started me working through the ranks to get to where I am today."

In 2021, Bianca was selected to officiate her first WNBL game.

"It was an amazing milestone and something I didn't expect at the time," she said.

Since then, she's had the opportunity to take to the court in front of a record WNBL crowd, when 7,681 fans turned out for the league's first ever fixture at John Cain Arena.

"Stepping out on the floor and hearing how loud it was, was an amazing experience and one I'll remember for a long time," Bianca said.

Bianca was well into her paramedic career by this point, having joined Ambulance Victoria (AV) in 2013.

She said it's been a challenge balancing her paramedic roster with refereeing, but now she's found what works.

"I've learnt and grown over the years and found a better balance, so my current roster arrangement supports both my refereeing and my family situation," she said.

"It means I have more time to spend with my family and on the court doing the things I love."

While the schedule was sometimes hard to balance, Bianca said the skills learned from refereeing and paramedicine have complemented each other.

"Both my refereeing and my paramedicine jobs link into each other and I've learnt a lot of skills that are interchangeable, a lot about communication and conflict management and building rapport with people," she said.

For Bianca, the highlight of refereeing is the friendships she's made along the way - and that's another similarity to her career at AV.

"The friends you have with refereeing and the friends you have with paramedicine, they stick with you through anything," she said.

"Some of my closest friends are from both lines of work."

As she heads into her fourth season on the WNBL refereeing panel, Bianca has her eyes firmly set on one day landing an NBL game.

"For the last couple of years, I've been involved in the NBL's elite referee development program so getting selected to referee an NBL game is my main goal at the moment," she said.

"I've been reffing NBL1 since 2018 and recently refereed at the NBL1 National Finals on the Sunshine Coast.

"I also went to the Gold Coast last month to referee my first NBL pre-season games, which was a great opportunity to showcase what I can do.

"Being selected for NBL would be an amazing achievement and to referee with some of the best in Australia would be an incredible opportunity."