Incident - We began having jammer referees reffing for their respective home teams. When Madison's jammer cleared the pack, the second to do so, she was declared lead. The Denver jammer ref then said as he passed me "No,she's not lead!", without any reason for it (to be fair, it's not a lot of time). I assumed he'd seen the Madison jammer foul, and decided I'd defer to Madison's jammer referee to make that call, I hadn't watched her entire pass. After the jam ended I called a timeout and found out Denver's jammer ref had already called lead at the time, and that's why he was saying Madison did not, should not, have lead.
Comment - While I blame myself, as dedicated head referee, for this mistake, I cannot help but feel that I am only partly responsible. Obviously more information would have cleared this problem up, numerous mistakes were made in this jam. But, clearly, this is ultimately about communication, something we can easily work on in a home league setting, but which we get little time to work on or fix during inter-league bouts. Further effort and focus should be made to establish better communication guidelines.
Posts
