She defied the odds by becoming the first woman to referee the Super Bowl, but Sarah Thomas had humble beginnings. Her passion for sports started at a young age in Pascagoula, Miss.

“In fifth grade, I was the first and only girl that played in the boys city league there and Pascagoula,” Thomas said.

She continued to play basketball with the boys through college, then one day she was ultimately cut.

“I said why? And he said because you’re a girl.”

Thomas turned that rejection into motivation.

She told Spectrum Bay News 9’s Katya Guillaume, “I have an older brother, and I just asked him one night, 'What are you doing tonight?' We were talking on the phone, and he said he was going to a football officials meeting. And I literally said, 'Can girls do that?'”

She said she went and that would be the turning point for her career in the big leagues.

WEB EXTRA: Sarah Thomas talks about her first football officiating meeting        

In 2013, Thomas's hard work paid off when the NFL called for their developmental program.

We asked her, “You credit that to the mentors and the men who have first started seeing you as 'Oh my gosh, this is a female, this has never happened before,' to now being your mentors that helped you get to where you were?”

She said “You're exactly right. Now of course I have to do the work. I have to apply it on the field and do my fair share of film study and rules study and all of those things. But it is because they walked the path before me and so maybe I'm the only girl there was so many that just embraced me.”

Today, she’s instilling that same “can-do anything” mindset on her kids - an especially important message for her youngest, Bailey.

“I would look at her and go, yes, I just took the Super Bowl, yes, I made history, and you just see it, you believe it and the fact of the matter is I would look at her and say, and you never have to ask 'Can girls do that.'”

WEB EXTRA: Sarah Thomas on "owning who you are."