For a calling such as officiating, surely one must have the zeal, courage, patience, determination, enthusiasm, and overwhelming passion to serve without fear or favour – passion being the key word.

From the countless hours of tough personal training regimes, mandatory fitness check-ups, and biased public backlash for some of the calls made during games, the passion and commitment to duty displayed by referees is nothing short of exceptional and simply cannot be denied.

Jamaica’s Fifa assistant referee Stephanie-Dale Yee Sing is among those who have been in the proverbial firing line, but instead of being dismayed, she has always thrived on the fact that success is not final and failure is not fatal, it is the courage to continue that counts.

And with that as her motivation, Yee Sing, now into her ninth year as a Fifa official, continues to raise the bar with a series of top performances and major achievements along the sidelines.

Her latest success is being named among the 33 referees, 55 assistant referees, and 19 video match officials selected to officiate at this year’s Fifa Women’s World Cup in Australia and New Zealand.

“I am overjoyed. We work hard every day with the hope of representing our country at these major tournaments. Rubbing shoulders with the best and running with elite players has always been my dream since I began. So it’s just an awesome feeling and I am grateful and overwhelmed,” a beaming Yee Sing said.

Much like Jamaica’s senior Reggae Girlz, the 34-year-old will be making a second-consecutive appearance at the World Cup scheduled for July 20 to August 20 after debuting at the global showpiece in France in 2019.

And like Yee Sing did when she, along with compatriot Princess Brown, did duties in three preliminary round games, as well as the semi-final between Sweden and Netherlands, she is hoping to repeat or even surpass that feat.

Should that happen, it would see Yee Sing again blazing the trail as one of the region’s standard-bearers after she and Brown accomplished the feat of being the first Caribbean officials — male or female — to feature in a World Cup final at the 2018 Under-17 showpiece in Uruguay.

So she is under no illusion as to what is required for her to realise another significant goal.

“Everything that we have achieved so far has just given us the craving to do more and to be better and that’s all we can do, just continue to strive for greatness and be the best person that we can be and do our best at all times when called upon,” Yee sing told the Jamaica Observer.

“Obviously, I’ve never done a senior World Cup final before, so I’m hoping to add that in my collection of firsts, but I know that in order for that to happen, I definitely have to just go there and do well, execute to the best of my abilities and be awesome,” she added.

So impetuous is her passion, which she pointed to as her driving force, unfair criticism by fans or players are of very little concern to her now.

“Honestly, there were times earlier in my career when I thought about quitting because it can get hard and frustrating at times when you probably had a bad game or get insulted by spectators or teams and don’t know how to recover from it.

“But once you have a good support system that believes in you and want to see you excel, then you will overcome,” Yee Sing, who also figured at the Under-17 World Cup in Jordan in 2016, shared.

“I just want to continue working hard; make the best use of the opportunities as they arrive; and just represent myself, the country, and my family the best I know how to, but from here it is one game, one day at a time,” she ended.

Hard-working, dedicated, and a referee of immense ability are some ways in which Yee Sing has been described, and former Fifa referee and new head of the Jamaica Football Federation (JFF) referees department Cardella Samuels concurs that her credentials label her as such.

“This is big news for Jamaica and the Caribbean, and it demonstrates that our refereeing programme is strong. Stephanie continues to be a very consistent performer and is very deserving of her appointment,” Samuels told the Observer.

“It shows, too, that our female refereeing programme is well and we hope these achievements will only serve to motivate other females to become match officials,” she said.