Leah Bowen called balls and strikes with 10,000 fans in the stands, a national TV audience watching on ESPN, and softball teams from Michigan and UCLA scrutinizing her every move. As an umpire at the 2015 NCAA Division I Women’s College World Series, the 2004 Bemidji State graduate still was conscious only of the game.

“Umpiring is customer service, and the customer is the game,” said Bowen, a Hermantown native who played both volleyball and softball at BSU. “If you’re not doing right about the game, you’re not doing right about yourself. You have to respect that.”

The respect translates into acting professionally to coaches, players and fans. It means keeping your cool. It means you don’t make friends during the game, but of course that’s not the point.

Now the intramural director at St. Mary’s University in San Antonio, Texas, Bowen started umpiring softball in 2008 after full-time jobs were hard to find in the recession despite a recently acquired graduate degree. It was one of several part-time opportunities she cobbled together. She began officiating high school games before eventually moving up to NCAA Division III and Division II. During a tournament in 2009, an impressed college coach asked why she wasn’t working Division I games.

Bowen umped her first Division I game later that year, and has built a resume that now includes 50-60 games each season in the Southeastern, Big 10, Big 12 and Missouri Valley conferences. She was one of seven umpires selected for the NCAA finals and worked the plate in front of the largest crowd at this year’s event.

While Bowen’s officiating acumen and personality served her well at the tournament, a return trip to the finals isn’t certain. The NCAA Division I playoff crews are put together each year from a national pool of eligible game callers.

Whatever the schedule, Bowen said she’s committed to being a neutral judge of her most important customer, the game.