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Armstrong vs Mars incident


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2 hours ago, GrumpyOldPucker said:

Hap - I doubt that you are or ever were an official. How do you know how frequently evals occur? If the evaluators are doing their job nobody but the officials will ever know they are in the building and I can assure that that they do happen. It would be nice to see them happen more frequently but that is very difficult to make happen. If you think there is a shortage of officials then you should think about the qualifications needed to evaluate and supervise and look at that pool. The evaluator needs to be experienced, respected by the officials being evaluated, be able to both teach and chastise in a positive manner that will be accepted and assimilated by the officials. So you want to take the better\best active officials out of your pool of skaters to go watch games and evaluate... sure you do..... but those officials can make a hell of a lot more money skating than watching so why would they give up hundreds of dollars skating to watch other officials make those dollars...... These guys are already out there 4-6 nights a week, you want them out all 7 days of the week? You must be a divorce lawyer. If you want more evals then you gotta convince better retired officials (who got out because they were burnt out and are enjoying not being at a rink all the time) to get back into the mix. Are you ready to pay for them? Assuming that the game fees for officials have gone up over the last few years then the total cost per varsity game for officials is conservatively $250+ to cover the two officials game fees and the scheduling fee. If you want me to do an eval I can guarantee that I'm not doing it for less than ~$80 per official per game.... and I'm probably low-balling myself as my time and experience are worth a lot more than that..... don't forget that I'm doing it to make money so whatever I get paid has to cover the IRS mileage rate for my round trip and still pay me enough to be worth my time to even be considered (my personal standard for accepting any assignment - screw this volunteer crap PAY ME NOW cuz that's the way the world works now). To put that mileage thing in perspective, think about the mileage that one would rack up traveling to Wheeling, Morgantown, Erie, or State College if you are geographically centered between them.... SO you are talking over 100 miles round trip

 

As for sanctions on officials that some of you are calling for, what would satisfy you - How about we draw, quarter, and hang the body parts at the four corners of your kingdom? And just what make you think that any sanction would ever me made public without the involvement of a bunch of lawyers? There have been officials suspended for weeks, months, even entire seasons. You just never hear 

 

I, as a parent that has worked hard to pay for my sons opportunity to play hockey, would be happy to pay more money not only for evaluations, but also another referee on the ice for games. Because I think it would make the game safer for all the kids playing.


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You are talking about increasing your staffing cost by ~40-50% assuming that you are adding one zebara on ice each game and putting an evaluator on for maybe 30% of the scheduled games. Plus, you gotta believe that the fee to schedule will go up when you add one or two more bodies per game. Yes you need to secure the funding for the staffing increase that you want but that's the easy part. of the issue. The issue is a whole lot bigger that just upping the dues a few hundred dollars. The problem is that you cannot throw money at a staffing issue... Even if you can find the bodies to put on the ice you still need to train them which takes time, games skated and mistakes made and learned from. And, you still don't have enough people to actually do the training (evaluating) at the level that you want.... We are not even mentioning the negative hostile work environment that needs to be overcome.

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PIHL did address this ages ago and crowd control was not put on the refs, but on the schools. Everyone who has kids who play PIHL hockey received messaging from their home organization on how school crowds would be handled. I haven't heard of any further issues. Schools are hyperaware right now.

I think this thread has outlived its usefulness and should be closed. If you want to continue discussing reffing, maybe make another thread.

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On 1/9/2022 at 1:03 AM, Happy Hockey Fan said:

 

I, as a parent that has worked hard to pay for my sons opportunity to play hockey, would be happy to pay more money not only for evaluations, but also another referee on the ice for games. Because I think it would make the game safer for all the kids playing.


How noble.

Now, go find the additional referees somewhere, since so many are being chased out of the job by the general unpleasantness of it, mainly the "deserved criticism" from parents in the stands. Heck, I can't imagine why we'd need a third referee at all, since there are so many in the stands willing to step up by yelling over the glass.

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5 hours ago, Lifelongbender said:

How noble.

Now, go find the additional referees somewhere, since so many are being chased out of the job by the general unpleasantness of it, mainly the "deserved criticism" from parents in the stands. Heck, I can't imagine why we'd need a third referee at all, since there are so many in the stands willing to step up by yelling over the glass.

You're right. They're all perfect. Even the ones who stood by while a female child was sexually harassed during a game. Neat. 

 

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8 hours ago, nemesis8679 said:

You're right. They're all perfect. Even the ones who stood by while a female child was sexually harassed during a game. Neat. 

 

Obviously they are all not perfect!  But the way it's going you are not going to have anyone to Ref.  So pay 200.00 a game and get the best of the best. Oh wait that would make it to expensive to play!  So what's your answer?

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11 hours ago, nemesis8679 said:

You're right. They're all perfect. Even the ones who stood by while a female child was sexually harassed during a game. Neat. 

This is a silly thing to say. If you have ever read anything I have ever said about referees on this site, you can't possibly think that is what I meant. Much less what I have said about the game in question. I'd venture to say that if you reread this thread you'll find that I was among the most critical of everyone involved, from the rink officials through the security officer, and including the on-ice officials. This is the response of a child who doesn't have a rational argument, especially since it doesn't reflect what I actually said.

The issue I am referring to is your frankly ridiculous defense a few days ago of parents yelling at referees as "legit criticism". It's not an easy job. And remember that every call you perceive as a good call to protect the players is one that the parents on the other team are going to yell obscenities at the officials over. 

There's every reason to support reviewing of officials and corrective action for underperforming officials. I support that idea wholeheartedly. I have no idea how often they actually are evaluated and what actions actually result from those evaluations. But until we get ourselves under control and stop acting like children in the stands, we have only ourselves to blame for the diminishing number of available officials, or how overworked the ones who will still so the job actually are. As I said before, parents screaming at referees from the stands aren't going to get what they want from the referees. I've never once seen that work to a team's advantage.

In the end what I believe is that there isn't any amount we could pay that would improve the officiating. What we need to do is improve the way that spectators, players, and coaches respond to officials.

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4 hours ago, Lifelongbender said:

This is a silly thing to say. If you have ever read anything I have ever said about referees on this site, you can't possibly think that is what I meant. Much less what I have said about the game in question. I'd venture to say that if you reread this thread you'll find that I was among the most critical of everyone involved, from the rink officials through the security officer, and including the on-ice officials. This is the response of a child who doesn't have a rational argument, especially since it doesn't reflect what I actually said.

The issue I am referring to is your frankly ridiculous defense a few days ago of parents yelling at referees as "legit criticism". It's not an easy job. And remember that every call you perceive as a good call to protect the players is one that the parents on the other team are going to yell obscenities at the officials over. 

There's every reason to support reviewing of officials and corrective action for underperforming officials. I support that idea wholeheartedly. I have no idea how often they actually are evaluated and what actions actually result from those evaluations. But until we get ourselves under control and stop acting like children in the stands, we have only ourselves to blame for the diminishing number of available officials, or how overworked the ones who will still so the job actually are. As I said before, parents screaming at referees from the stands aren't going to get what they want from the referees. I've never once seen that work to a team's advantage.

In the end what I believe is that there isn't any amount we could pay that would improve the officiating. What we need to do is improve the way that spectators, players, and coaches respond to officials.

Sorry if I misunderstood you. Mostly we're on the same page. 

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  • 1 month later...
On 11/1/2021 at 3:00 PM, Michael Cominos said:
I feel it is necessary for me to speak up on this forum and offer my apologies to the entire Western Pennsylavania Hockey Community, the Mars School District Community, the Mars Area School District and the hockey team itself for the behavior of our student section Thursday night. 
 
Since we first heard of these behaviors as school adminstrators we have been in contact with the owner/operator of the venue in which the game occured, as well as our local president expressing our displeasure for this behavior as well as the lack of action taken on the security officers’ part as well as the arena management. They agreed that more should have been done.
 
We have reached out and discussed this incident with the administration at Mars High School to offer our aplogogies not only to them but mostly to offer our apologies to the young lady that was ridiculed. The school adminstration stated that they appreicated our efforts in this regard. 
 
We have been in contact with the PIHL and have been part of banning our students from attending any further games until a point in time in which the PIHL feels we have taken enough steps to ensure apporiate behavior. We will respect any decision they make and will be supportive in any way in which we can.  Ironically, we are in the process of creating and implementing a sportsmanship program within our school to serve as an educational opportunity for our students. Unfortunately, we were not fast enough in the implementation of this program. 
 
We are still trying to identify the students from the video to take disciplinary action. The bottom line is we do not condone these actions from any of our students and will look to take appropriate disciplinary actions as a school. 
 
This is certainly a mess. We are embarrassed and working hard to change the behaviors and ensure what happened Thursday night never hapens again. 
 
Mike Cominos
Principal
 

Principal Mike - it appears you’ve let two  separate incidents with the varsity team get pushed under the rug after your apologetic post. 

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3 hours ago, Danner27 said:

Principal Mike - it appears you’ve let two  separate incidents with the varsity team get pushed under the rug after your apologetic post. 

Sorry, Danner27 I had to go back and look at it.  That's a sad state of affairs at Armstrong.  Hard to believe they would not address that after the incident they had.  Shows that the team and school learned nothing for sure.

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