Game Journal - WFTDA National Tournament

WFTDA 2008 National Tournament - the Northwest Knockdown

Incident - During the course of the tournament, it became clear that my personal tolerance or threshold for what was a minor or major with regards to "refusing to reform the pack" was slightly tighter than that of my head referee. During our first bout I'd accepted that and over the course of the weekend I'd kept in conversation with him to make sure I was reffing as he liked, and I feel we worked well together. Nevertheless, there was a part of me that felt like skaters were abusing what is arguably one of the hardest calls to make, and while I've been trying not to let things like that affect me (they don't change my ability to referee), this was a situation where I clearly felt like it was affected by my reffing, which I think understandably was aggravating to me in this situation. But this is not about my interpretation versus someone else's (since both were correct interpretations), this is about my response to that. Because it came out a little bit during the final bout we reffed as a crew. During our last bout I was discussing a different interpretation with our head referee, and ended up being more forceful in my disagreement than I wish I had been in front of skaters.

Comments - Obviously, I regret that I did that. I don't know that it was as jarring to anyone else as I felt it was, or could have been, or even that it was noticed, but even if it wasn't that wouldn't make it ok. This continues the problem I've had in the past, which I've discussed before, of accepting roles other than head referee, with adapting to another referee's interpretations. In this case my emotions over one interpretation fed into my reaction over another interpretation. When I'm not head reffing, my reaction to my head referee's interpretation should only ever be "OK, I'll do that, let me know if I need to adjust more". But I'm also confident I'm getting better with this problem, I spent the weekend adapting to an interpretation other than my own, and reffing successfully within that system, on a crew that I think was extremely successful in every bout we reffed. In this instance I realized as soon as I started that I was in front of skaters, I hope that next time I realize that right before I start, so I don't do it at all, instead of apologizing for it later.