Us and Them
There's this thing that happens during interleague season, and it's already starting...the skaters' view of refs becomes less Us and Them. When they're reffed by other people, they realize what they like about us, and start spouting exclamations like, "Thank GOD you guys were there!" That part is kind of nice; who doesn't want to feel appreciated? But the other part is weird, where they think of us as just Windy City Rollers, and make disparaging comments about other refs. They just rattle off complaints and comments about reffing in general, and assume that because we're all Rollers, we all see it the same way. They don't realize we're on Team Ref. Yeah, we're part of the league, but (at least to me) we're MORE a part of reffing. I wouldn't come up to any of them and start talking shit about a teammate's ineffective blocking, or how she wastes time finding a legal re-entry point because she doesn't bother to learn the rules about where she can come in. But they don't see it that way. They want us to be defensive of them, and whether or not they like it during home season, they want to be reffed how they're used to. It's especially hard when they're right, of course. Not all refs are awesome. It never feels good to see a ref blow a call, no matter whom they're reffing. But even then, we can't just join the complaining party. I really don't think they understand our need and sometimes-written, sometimes-un-written code to not disparage each other to skaters, ever. We all work so hard for so little respect, on the whole, and refs simply cannot contribute to the attitude that we suck and ruin games.
I wish they'd understand that when they say the reffing was scary or atrocious or fill-in-any-negative-adjective-here, they're talking about me, whether or not I reffed the game.
I wish they'd understand that when they say the reffing was scary or atrocious or fill-in-any-negative-adjective-here, they're talking about me, whether or not I reffed the game.