Wednesday, March 25, 2015

bout footage viewing

well, it looks like I didn't really screw up!  The calls I made that got caught on the video were agreed with. So there's that.

Tuesday, March 24, 2015

Indeed

I received my referee assignment for the doubleheader this upcoming weekend in Providence; I'm an alt ref for the sanctioned game and an OPR for the regulation game, which is pretty much what I expected.
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So in this post I listed my goals for this season. I should probably caveat them all with a "and not just because there was a lack of available referees".

Monday, March 23, 2015

another weekend of derby and nobody died!

This weekend was interesting.

As readers are aware, before Saturday the only venue in which I had OPRed actual games was not our league's venue.  The other venue is dark and close, so that's what I got used to.  Our home venue is a hockey rink (they take out the ice for us) and it's very spacious and bright and it was weird.

But I think it went ok.  Tuesday evening instead of our usual on-skates practice we're going over to the Head Ref's house to review the footage (he wears a helmet cam).  We'll see just how much I screwed up.

Friday, March 20, 2015

Weekend o'Derby

Tomorrow is my first bout where I'll be reffing on my own turf!  Our league is doing three half hour bouts in a round-robin fashion for our home teams - I'll be OPR on two and an Alt for the third. (The Alt usually sits with the announcers and provides a ref's perspective on the action; that'll be fun.)

Sunday early afternoon I'm going to be Penalty Box timing a sanctioned bout for our A team, which will be fun as well.

OFFICIATE ALL THE THINGS

Wednesday, March 11, 2015

the world keeps spinning; I get taken along for the ride

This past Saturday was my first NSOing at a sanctioned bout; I got to do penalty box timing.  It went pretty well; there was one point when the box was full and I was like OKAY YOU GO NOW I DON'T REMEMBER WHAT YOUR NUMBER IS EXACTLY BUT GO NOW PLEASE.

We worked on a few different types of starts at practice last night - duck walks, side-stepping (which is useful when you're jam reffing, apparently), backwards and toe stops.  I felt very Michigan J. Frog HELLO MY BABY HELLO MY DARLIN' HELLO MY RAGTIME GAL during the side-stepping one, which probably means I should work on it.  I've also been working on backwards crossovers, which go well until I get going too fast and I get sorta JANE STOP THIS CRAZY THING and have to slow down/stop.

Saturday is the St. Patrick's Day parade.  The weather here has been somewhat nicer this week than in the past (temperatures in the 40's WAHOO) but I think it's supposed to rain on Saturday.  Sigh.  I don't think anything will ever top 2012, where it was sunny and in the 70's and there were like a hundred thousand people who came out. (I've participated in the parade since 2009.)

Our league's first bout of the season is a week from Saturday.  We're doing a round-robin with our home teams - three half hour periods.  I think they like to roster refs for two shifts and off one; I told our head ref that I'd be more than happy to NSO the off-shift.

The weekend after that is a doubleheader A/B in Providence.  I am the only skate ref going (there's a tournament that everyone else is going to).  I'm a wee bit nervous but we'll see what happens.

Wednesday, March 4, 2015

what's been happening in the land of Queenie?

Helped out with another home game, OPR.  It was much warmer in the venue, which was nice.

There was one situation where one team had too many blockers (four on the track and one in the box).  As soon as the whistle blew, I started calling for one of the blockers to leave the track, but she didn't hear me (I was at the pivot line, they were at the jammer line, the acoustics were horrible), so I just kept calling....and she didn't hear me.  At that point I was like oh crap I forget what should I do at this point and just kept yelling at any blocker who was close to me to get off the track and none of them heard me.

So, after the jam was over, I went to the middle and the Head Ref was like "oh, in that case you have the authority to whistle the jam dead and then immediately come into the middle and tell me why you called it dead."  Ok.  Now I know.

 Then there was a situation where the jammer's helmet cover got knocked off her head, and then she went to the penalty box, and another blocker picked it up. I ended up calling that blocker on a back block shortly thereafter, and then the other team's coach did an official review, and we were like oh yeah that's right she shouldn't have picked up the cover another 30 seconds in the box for you!

But other than those little flubs, I felt very good about my performance.  The pack speed was crazy insane fast; I have to work on keeping up.  We got great food afterwards (including some fantastic tuna noodle casserole).

Anyway, this upcoming Saturday there's a sanctioned bout out there, and I'm penalty box timing. Hopefully I remember how to do that.