Appreciate Life

The last year has been tough. I lost an uncle to cancer at 50, a wife to a great friend and mentor to cancer, and a life long friend and boss to a heart attack at 56. While I was only close to one of the deceased I was very close to the families and friends of all. Either way the pain is still the same. To see and feel the pain from the people around you and the pain you feel inside is eye opening. So eye opening that i decided to make a few changes in my life.

The first decision I made was to lose weight and get in shape. I don't mean go on a crash diet but a lifestyle change. I don't have a wife and kids but I have parents, brothers and sisters, nieces and nephews that I need to be around for in the future. I have changed my eating habits completely. Being single it is cheaper to go to a fast food restaurant and eat off the value menu. At the pace I was going I wasn't going to make it to 50. That also goes along to with the second change. I am going to spend money on things I want. If you really want, not need, just want something,buy it for yourself once in a while if it is going to make you happy. It is only money and you can always make more.

Parents are worse than their kids!

In today's day and age it is hard to believe that parents often times behave worse than their kids. I recently refereed a PeeWee B hockey game between the two Bismarck PeeWee B teams. Keep in mind that there are two PeeWee A teams in Bismarck so these are the bottom two teams in Bismarck for 11 and 12 year olds.

Before the game started I noticed an odd amount of spectators for a PeeWee B game starting to gather. I was then informed by a fellow referee that the game I was about to officiate was the difference between one of the teams going to a B1 and the other the B2 tournament. The teams were tied for the year and it all came down to this game...GREAT!!!.

Less than halfway through the first period a pile up occurred in front of one of the goailes and two players started pushing and punching, well as good as you can punch at 11 years old. I called both kids for penalties and immediately realized how much fun this day was going to be. One coach is instanly screaming that his kid nothing wrong. I gave that coach an unsportsman like conduct penalty and informed him that there would be absolutely zero tolerance in this game. I explained this to the other team's coaches and that was the last problem I had with the coaches...enter the parents.

From that point forward everytime there was body contact, an offsides, or a goal, one half of the building would start screaming. Penalties were dead even for the game, and towards the end of the game the parents started yelling at other parents from the opposite teams.

The game went into overtime...even better! Two minutes into overtime there was a blatant penalty that I called. In overtime you only call the obvious. Kid goes into the penalty box, 20 seconds later his team is scored on and they lose. The kid knew he got the penalty and you could tell he felt horrible for it. He never argued or said a word because he knew he did something wrong.

The kids shook hands, losing team all crying but they still showed good sportsmanship. Going from the ice to our locker room was uneventful, much unlike going from the locker room to my car. As soon as I opened the door to the locker room there was a group of parents 25 feet away that were pointing at me and shaking their heads...obviously their kid plays for the losing team. I decided I should wait for the other referee. As we walked by the group of parents we heard words like "asshole" and "blind". This didn't bother me but as soon as I took one step out the door there was another group of parents, 3 dads and a mom to be precise. They immediately told me I have a lot of "balls" to call a penatly in the overtime of such an impotant game. The mother commented how she could have called a better game from the stands. I wanted to open my bag and hand her a whistle and tell her to give it a shot but i didn't. I sternly stated that the calls were my decisiion and not open for discussion. As I walked towards my car two other parents approached me, they thanked me and told me I did a good job. Their team won. I finally get to my car and started to put away my gear and I hear a car stop right behind me. I shut my trunk and turn around and there is a dad and a player in his truck. I asked if I could help him and his reply was "just waiting for you to leave so I can see where you live". I chuckled and shook my head and got in my car, the guy left...big talker.

The whole point of this is where do parents get off treating referee's like this. For a long time USA hockey has had declining numbers of hockey officials every year and it is days like that one that causes the decrease. I have pretty thick skin but often times it is other 15-16 year old kids that are officiating those games and would probably never ref again after being treated like that. Of course we did get off easy. My dad and I once had to have a police escort out of the Dickinson hockey rink after officiating a PeeWee tournament. And other officials have actually been physically abused by parents. The worse case scenario has been a referee beaten to death at a PeeWee hockey game in Boston in 2003 and just last year a 5 month old pregnant referee being kicked by a parent at a fifth grade basketball game.

Next time you are at a sporting event and you think the official made a bad call stop and think about how you would handle it in their situation. Maybe we can save a few referee's from quitting because of obnoxious parents and spectators.