Lo Van Pham will officiate his first NFL playoff game on Monday, News Channel 10 reports.
The NFL hired Pham as a referee in May 2022, making him the first Asian American referee in the league.
Pham was born in Vietnam and fled the country with his family when he was seven. They briefly lived at refugee camp in the Philippines before moving to Amarillo, Texas.
“I’m just amazed we even survived that journey,” Pham told USA TODAY in a 2022 interview. “We were always on the move. We didn’t know where we were. We just kind of went where they told us to go. And then when we came to America, the one thing my parents always stressed was education, that education would lead us to a better opportunity.”
The ref said he has always loved football.
“Football taught me to do a task for the greater good of the overall team goal,” Pham said in an interview with Amarillo Globe-News. “It taught me a lot of discipline and doing your job when it came time to do it.”
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