100 Bouts, or, A Cautionary Tale (August 2011)

I recently found this post, from August of 2011, and I thought it was interesting to look back on some of these points. I wrote it right before I reffed my century bout, which felt like a pretty big deal to me at the time, and thought I'd dust it off and repost, since it seems like some of the issues in it are still worth discussing.


I've been thinking about this upcoming double-header for a while. Making it to 100 bouts doesn't have as much to do with my skill as it does my stubborness; it isn't as if this number accords any special status where I go from "passable" to "good" or any such rating. Like every other ref I have my good qualities and my qualities that still need work, and I've been lucky in that I've had the opportunity to see where those things are.

I think there are some things vitally important for officials, and I still hold that I should learn something from every bout that I work. I've had a lot of opportunity for learning in the last fifty bouts that I've worked. I've worked a range of bouts in a variety of places with a huge range of refs and crews. I had the honor of being a crew head ref at Spring Roll and head reffed what may have been one of the most high-profile bouts in the history of men's derby. I'm one of the co-tournament head refs for Empire Skate Showdown and I'm the assistant head ref for the MRDA Championships in October. These are really important to me and I'm excited to take on these new responsibilities.

I've been challenged. I worked the most nerve-wracking bout of my officiating career this season -- and I got something wrong that the head ref overrode. It's on video. I haven't been able to watch it yet, but I will. What I value is that I'm able to learn from it without being made a spectacle -- as far as I know. It's taken me a while to accept the fact that when I am on the track I'm getting videotaped, photographed, and, in some ways, marketed. I don't like it, because, really, it's not about me.

But at the same time I'm able to set those things aside and stop thinking about them when I'm on the track and I'm working. Because you know what? Refs make mistakes. But we also need to be able to learn from them. I don't say that to excuse those errors. But I want to think about them in a context.

I've spent this year trying to focus on my jam reffing, which is the position I needed more experience with. As a head ref, I understood how it worked, but I hadn't really experienced all of the little nuances that go with it, and the more I jam reffed the more I understood the importance of being a head ref who has her crew's collective back; the kind of head ref who can pull someone aside and in those thirty seconds can find the right words to get a ref back on point, even if something has just gone terribly wrong, and learning to become that ref who can hear those things to fix whatever I'm getting wrong.

And then today I ran across some bout footage from last year. In specific, I'm talking about a stand-alone two-minute clip from a bout I was head reffing in which a ref on my crew makes a noticeable, prominent error. Some of you know the footage I'm referencing, but I'm deliberately being vague because the point I want to make--and one all refs know--is that it could happen to any one of us. And as I watched the clip, which takes maybe 45 seconds of footage at speed and then slows it down to run at half-speed, I found myself feeling angry all over again.

The entire point of this video is to display one ref's mistake; the video lists the ref in question and that ref's league, and makes a very prominent display of one bad call. I can't see what other purpose this video serves.    What it fails to show is that the second that jam was over the ref realized how wrong the call was and that we spent some time sorting it out. What it fails to show is the loud complaining at another league's bout the next day by the videographer who then badmouthed that ref at any opportunity for months afterward.

What that video also fails to do is encourage that ref to improve. It is mortifying and it is painful, and it is out there on the internet forever linked to this ref's name. So I ask you, since it's kind of a hot topic in derby right now: how are video like these not a form of bullying?

Here's what I'm taking away from this situation, because I want to think positively about what good can come of situations like these. What I want to do in my future bouts is always be that good ref who supports her crew, always be the ref who encourages people to improve and succeed and to try to be a role model as I continue to work. I want to find new challenges and work to improve.

But I also want to be braver about speaking up. I want to be able to point to things that I think corrupt community and to find ways that we can be better about supporting one another -- refs, NSOs, and skaters. And I want you to do it too. I want to find ways to step up in discussions and try to get people thinking differently about officials, because the more I can talk with you about what I do and what my job is like, the better we are all going to make derby as a whole.

And that's my hope for bout #99, bout #100, bout #101 and on into the rest of my officiating career.