The Cochrane Rockies U10 won gold and The U12 ‘A’ and U12 ‘B’ both won silver at a ringette tournament in Beaumont.
When I write it is normally about hockey and other professional sports. But this week we are going to talk about officiating in ringette. This past weekend the U12 ‘B’ Cochrane Rockies Rebels were at the Brass Ring tournament in Beaumont. The Rebels played great winning all three of their round-robin games with great play from Abbie Davidson and Kyra Rothwell. The Rebels got a place in the finals against Saskatoon. The girls came out flying and headed into halftime with a 4-2 lead. In the second half there were three Rebels in the penalty box and all had penalties ending at different times. Saskatoon scored, letting one player out. There were three seconds left in the other and that girl was let out.
The Saskatoon coach freaked out and argued with the timekeeper and referees for a solid 10 minutes. The argument was pointless because the difference would be three seconds of possession for the Rebels. Then with about a 90 seconds left the Rebels were up 7-5 and Saskatoon scored one to cut the lead down to one. With 30 seconds left a Saskatoon forward was on a breakaway and was hooked by a Rebels defender. Then something that was, I would dare to say, almost a disgrace to officiating of the sport happened.
Ringette is a non-contact sport. The game was a little chippy at times but no real hits. With 20 seconds left there were two clear hits that were not just clear, but big! Like there is no way you can miss one, let alone two!
Saskatoon went down and scored and tied the game. This would not have happened if the referees did their jobs. The Rebels had gold stolen from them. Which leads me to ask, are these refs getting taught how to blow a whistle or are they actually being taught correctly how to officiate a game?
This game was terribly officiated from the beginning, not just at the end. There was confusion all game and the refs had no idea of what to do.
Congratulations to all of the teams on their great play last weekend.
