Dee Kantner (born May 3, 1960) is a women's basketball referee for the National Collegiate Athletic Association since 1984.
Kantner has also held the positions of Director of Referee Development and Supervisor of Officials for the Women's National Basketball Association during the 2000s.
[2] For her post-secondary career, Kantner received an athletic scholarship from the University of Pittsburgh and was on multiple sport teams.
She continued her engineering experience in the sales department for Westinghouse Electric Corporation during the early 1980s and worked in Asheville, North Carolina.
At the time, she was part of the first-ever "major college men's game" to only have women referees alongside Patty Broderick and June Corteau.
[13] In 1997, Kantner was hired as one of the first women referees in the National Basketball Association alongside Violet Palmer.
[16] After leaving the NBA, she continued to work in the WNBA as the Director of Referee Development from 2002 to 2004 and was renamed Supervisor of Officials in 2004.
[17] For the NCAA, Kantner has been a referee in over twenty Final Four rounds since 1992 and over ten championship games in women's basketball.
[18][25] Kantner was chosen by the Women's Basketball Coaches Association as the winner of their Jostens-Berenson Lifetime Achievement Award in 2023.