On Saturday I was joined by a rather splendid group of stripes to help manage and govern a bout for my 'home league'. I was rather excited to be working with some familiar faces and a few I had yet to referee with.
Most open door bouts I'd had the opportunity to be involved with had been double headers and long days, this was just the one single game for a change which flew by.
Most of my bout experiences as a referee have had one or two slightly odd or new situations arise, whether that's a situation the crew hadn't seen before or had to deal with, injuries or of course, police interference.... (Read this post for more info ;p).
So it came as a little bit of a surprise with the first 'home' bout, all going well, smoothly with no real disruptions. Just a nice good game of Roller Derby. HOOORAY! Cherry Fury, Meg Le Maniac and Duncan Disorderly joined us from London way, alongside Xavier Bacon, Stubble Entenre, and myself and Abi Sinya came together to refree Seaside Siren's VS Romsey Town Rollerbillies.
Refs we're briefed, as per protocol and Dee's overall focus and emphasis was on 'calm'. Calm talking with each other, calm to the skaters, just being calm through everything we do. If you're not calm, go away, breathe and come back calm.
I'm sure having a very experienced ref crew helped matters but it does ring as very true.
Referee's keep the game flowing, reacting in a hasty/and rushed manner may rub off on others and escalate a problem rather than solving effectively, not to mention making poor calls from not thinking clearly. There was one foul out which Dee sorted mid Jam while John, as planned, took on the whole IPR for a moment while Dee moved outside to inform skaters and benches, to then be rejoin in the middlee after the situation had been dealt with to carry on with the rest of the game.
I won't go into masses of detail over the bout, as I've left this post too long but it was great to see such an experienced crew working together and I'd learnt a lot that day as ever, bringing through lessons and learning into my ref practice and supporting other referee in league too.
I have begun to refocus my attention to adequate mental preparedness and approaches in order to be an effective and fair referee any time I;m on skates and in Derby. Having the mental focus and calm approach allows the body to do what it does and your mind to focus on the game. Training sessions have been busy with a few recent ref shortages but I've been feeling really happy with my performance of late, especially with limited resources while enabling our crew to move on-wards and upwards.
That'll do for this overdue post :)
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