OK LET'S DO THIS

I've been back on skates attending ref practices for about a month now.  There's usually a drill at the beginning of the session where we skate around the track, one ref is in the middle.  He/she will give a hand signal while maintaining eye contact with skating ref.  That ref needs to make up a call on a skater based on that hand signal.

Sometimes making up the color/number is the most difficult part.  I tend to stick with black, or white, or green (our league colors) and just rattle off whatever numbers enter my brain.  Sometimes I get goofy and give "chartreuse" or "plaid". 

Actually, no.  The most difficult part is when it comes down to the eighteen bazillion "illegal procedures" penalties.  I was given a mnemonic to help remember them (Illegal PERC, PUBES violation, FIST)*, but I'm skating and I'm like "Green, six nine one....um.....PUBES!"

Then we work on pack definition, talk about rule loopholes, etc. I finally understand OPR rotation now!

Last Thursday was the first league scrimmage I skated in as a ref.  I shadowed our Head Ref who was IPR and got completely overwhelmed.  DID THAT PERSON FALL AS A RESULT OF THAT ACTION OR DID THEY FALL ON THEIR OWN I DON'T KNOW GAAA WHY DID I DECIDE TO DO THIS ZOMFG I'VE MADE A TERRIBLE MISTAKE.  I Blue Screen of Deathed after a while.

Last night I was put out on my own, as an OPR.  (The Head Ref warned everyone that I am new to this and not to yell at me when I miss calls.)

The result?

My very first call, the first time I put whistle to lips and blew....

...I called out the wrong color.

oops

But other than that, I think it went well.  I made some cutting calls, didn't call one cut call that I did see (the jammer was way down on the other side of the straightaway but I saw her put both hands out of bounds, I was all "that was a cut.  I should call that as a cut.  Two hands are a cut, right?  The loophole is the 'one handed cartwheel', two hands is a cut.  The jammer ref didn't call it, he probably saw something different than me."  The action was put under official review, jammer ref said "my view was blocked, I only saw one hand", I said "I saw two, I should've called it", and we went from there). No one yelled at me.

Lesson learned: call what you see.

Tomorrow morning I'm going to a league about an hour from here.  They have a junior derby league that practices the last Saturday of every month, and I've been told that it's a great training experience.  I will take all the training I can get.


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*Illegal:

• Positioning
• Engaging
• Re-entry
• Call-off

• Penalty box violation
• Uniform violation
• Bench staff violation
• Equipment violation
• Star pass  violation

• Failure to yield
• Interference
• Stalling
• Too many skaters