bthompson04

I fall down a lot

Then you must have to buy your fellow officials a lot of beer ;)

When you work in the three-official system, are you doing both lining and wearing the bands?

I only ask because I think the path to a female official working in higher level men's professional leagues is as a referee, just based on responsibilities. Ice awareness and edgework/positioning are not exclusive to males and I have worked with many female officials that are very accomplished referees. On the flip side, lining is a bit trickier since you generally want bigger, stronger individuals, as they're responsible for breaking up altercations.

I’ll chime in from a hockey perspective: yes, although I almost never do it. Perhaps the fact that the boards act as a sort of physical barrier between parents and us (plus the fact that they’d never catch us if they came on the ice because of not wearing skates) makes it a bit different from baseball/basketball/football/soccer, but my general philosophy is:

As long as you aren’t starting a fight in the stands or throwing things on the ice, I really don’t care what you’re yelling (racist/homophobic language aside). All you’re doing is embarrassing your kid and making for an awkward car ride home.

I’ve never had the way I officiate a game be changed by someone screaming at me. And, the more you do it, the more you tend to find that the loudest parents are the ones that know the least about the rules. I’ve legitimately had parents scream for penalties from the stands and couldn’t even guess which team they were supporting based on what they were asking for.