Did I say four of the seven refs? I MEANT FIVE.

So yeah, there were two of us there on Thursday night.  I ended up doing front IPR, as much as I could do front IPR.

It was interesting, for a few reasons:

1. trying to skate backwards along the inside track boundary, while keeping an eye on the pack.  OH NO I'M SKATING ON THE ACTUAL TRACK GAAAAH.  I could do it more or less in turns 1 and 2, because I would look at the pivot line and realize I'd have to start turning soon, but turns 3 and 4?  Not so much.    I tried putting a piece of tape on the track as a START TURNING NOW signal, but it didn't really work.  

2. Actually keeping an eye on the pack.  As front IPR I was told I should position myself at the absolute front of everyone, which meant speeding up to keep up with the chasers.  Which meant having to switch from skating backwards to skating forwards, which meant having to transition in the side I'm not as comfortable with, which meant falling a few times.  Whee?

3.  Calling penalties!  Yeah, I need to do that too!   When "pack is back" is called, you have to figure out where the pack ends, and put 20 feet on top of that, and get ready to call people out of play!  In the span of about two seconds!  Yay!

So it happened.  It went...okay.

Sunday I helped out at our league's travel team tryouts, where I was the *only* ref.  Whee again.  I called a few big obvious penalties, and raised some questions about smaller ones.