We’re very lucky to have Shref as DRD’s Head Ref. He’s an internationally recognised ref with an extensive curriculum including being Crew Head in both Women’s and Men’s World Cups! That’s no small feat for one man.
Check out his write up on leading a referee boot camp hosted by Roller Derby Madrid.
So how did I spend my weekend of the 22nd of October?
In the beautiful city of Madrid surrounded by some lovely people who all wanted to learn more about officiating. I had clearly brought the weather with me as it was raining for most of the day but that didn’t matter as it was still warm by my standards.
We started at 9am to do some classroom work with about 25 people present. This went on till 2pm and during that time we covered lots of tips and tricks to help people with officiating. We got lots of wild and wonderful questions asked that made everyone think about difficult scenarios and how to deal with them.
We had a break at 2 and the fabulous Alf and Srta Bionica brought me for a fantastic lunch which included all the Spanish food you could possibly want. After stuffing ourselves stupid we had to make our way to an awesome skating rink and started the on-skates session of the day at 4pm.
We started with an hour of skating drills in order to help improve our speed, endurance and agility. Lots of these drills can be practiced at regular training sessions without interrupting skaters’ practice. Then the skaters all rocked up for 3 hours of scrimmage. A huge thank you to all the skaters who attended. Some were coming from far flung parts of the country and were driving or taking the train for 6 hours in order to be there! During the scrimmage the skaters were great and helped me create some weird scenarios and we were able to use these as a learning tool for all the refs and skaters too. It was great seeing how happy all the skaters were and to see the refs so focused on track and those watching were having a great time seeing the evil scenarios I was creating.
8pm is when we finally finished the day’s skating and that’s when, in true Spanish style, we went out for food and beer! As tired as we all were it didn’t stop us from finding cool bars to go to and weird and wonderful people we met along the way. My head finally hit my pillow at around 5am.
Thank you so much to Madrid Roller Derby and to all the people who travelled from far and wide to be there. More great memories made thanks to all the people who share the track together.
Shref
