Officials Appreciation Week: Julie Dussliere

In honor of Winter Sports Officials Appreciation Week, the Colorado High School Activities Association (CHSAA) is celebrating some of its fall sport officials on social media and CHSAANow.com, while member schools are encouraged to celebrate officials, as well. This can be achieved in several ways, both big and small. All of which is meant to say, thank you officials!

If you’re interested in becoming an official, fill out this form and CHSAA will contact you, or learn more information about officiating in Colorado.

AURORA – Julie Dussliere has had the opportunity to do just about everything in her swimming and diving career.

She swam collegiately at Purdue, coached, officiated for CHSAA and the NCAA and has helped prepare team USA as the chief of Paralympics for the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee. Dussliere even met her husband John through swimming.

Having someone who understands what being an official means and what it takes is an important shared experience. Although Dussliere has found that the officiating community as a whole has been deliberative of situations that arise at competition, it’s always nice to have someone at home with whom you can share ideas with and talk through those situations.

“I was known as the assigner in Colorado Springs,” Dussliere said. “I was the official who took on the additional duty of assigning all of our officials to meets. And intentionally I would not put John and I on the same pool deck, unless it was a situation where we were short handed and I absolutely had to. The perk there is we could both come home at night and he could say ‘hey, we had such and such situation happen, we had this disqualification, or we had something interesting happen where we saw something new in diving that none of us had experienced before.’”

Although seeing new things hasn’t necessarily been a frequent phenomenon with how much Dussliere has been around swimming and diving, there is still a certain vigor about officiating a meet.

Things that may seem mundane like ensuring a host has enough timers becomes of the utmost importance. So while each meet certainly has its marvels, the repetition of competition turns focus onto some of the other things at those meets.

“I’ve been doing this long enough that I rarely see something new anymore,” Dussliere said. “But when I was both coaching and officiating over 20 years ago, it was probably a little more common as a newer official. You’re get used to seeing different situations or different scenarios you need to deal with, whether it’s something that happens in competition or off the field of play. You watch an athlete do something that maybe you haven’t seen before or you’re not sure about, or it’s the competition management side of things, working with the coaches and to host schools on how they’re running meet operations.

“Do they have enough timers? Do they have their computer set up? Is the timing system tested? Those are all things that you need to know. Officials who have been around for a while are continually mentoring new officials as they see those things. So I can’t really think of anything in the last half a dozen years that I’ve seen that I hadn’t already seen before, but I have been doing this for a little while.”

All of Dussliere’s experience has led her on some incredible journeys around the world. Dussliere most recently worked professionally at the 2024 Paris Olympic and Paralympic Games, but has been involved in the international Olympic & Paralympic Movements since 2000 when she was a coach for Team USA at the Sydney Paralympic Games.

Each Games or international event brings opportunities for Dussliere to reconnect with old friends, meet new ones and work alongside the world’s greatest athletes. While working with the USOPC didn’t necessarily facilitate a whole lot of free time during the Games, the opportunity and experiences made the work a lot less daunting.

“I was fortunate enough to be in a role where I was out at sport venues, working with our sports and supporting athletes and teams,” Dussliere said. “We had a lot of staff behind the scenes who didn’t have that opportunity. If they were focused on athlete recovery in an performance center, or transportation logistics, they might not be in a venue watching competition at the Games.”

Dussliere sits atop a mountain of accomplishments throughout her career. From her time as a competitor in the waters to becoming the first woman and U.S representative to be named president of the Americas Paralympic Committee.

That connection to the sport she grew up enjoying has been an important one, and one she would highly recommend to others who may be in a similar situation.

“I think CHSAA sports and officiating is a great opportunity and obviously swimming and diving for me, but across the board for people who have an affinity for sports,” Dussliere said. “A sport you did when you were younger, or in high school or college. It’s a great way to get involved and stay involved in those sports. And there’s always such a need for officials at the high school level. It’s just a continual recruitment of trying to find people who love that sport, who are willing to come into the officials group and start officiating events, to give back to that sport.”