Vandermeer, Fran

Fran Vandermeer has this advice for referees: “Officiate with integrity!”

A basketball, volleyball, and track and field athlete at Bulkeley High School in Hartford, Fran was named her high school's Senior Female Athlete of the Year in 1975. At Southern Connecticut State University, Fran played volleyball for four years and was team captain her senior year.

But it was Southern Connecticut's Professor Louise Albrecht's officiating classes that really piqued Vandermeer's interest. Fran would go on to become a member of the Connecticut High School Board of Officials and the Connecticut Collegiate Board of Officials.

According to a former CCIL coach, Fran always entered their gyms with enthusiasm and confidence. She made everyone feel as though “we were in it together” and that “we should handle the game correctly. Her officiating was always clear, respectful and under control and played an important part in the positive development of high quality girls’ basketball in the Central CT Interscholastic League.”

A basketball and volleyball official for over thirty years, Fran Vandermeer worked the NCAA Division II Volleyball Finals and Elite Eight from 1995 to 2002. Vandermeer has coached NCAA Division III Volleyball for twenty years, spending much of her career at Williams College, where her teams won seven NESCAC conference titles and four New England Regional championships, while advancing to the NCAA elite eight. She was named New England Regional Volleyball Coach of the Year in 2002 and 2004 and NESCAC Conference Coach of the Year in 2006 and 2007.

Fran was inducted into the Connecticut Women’s Volleyball Hall of Fame in 1998 and the New Agenda Northeast Women’s Hall of Fame in 2002. In 2007, the Southern Connecticut State University Alumni Association presented Fran Vandermeer with its Alumni Citation Award.