Officials
Officials for youth hockey are often youth players themselves, calling games in lower levels than the one they participate in themselves. Just as players start out playing youth hockey, officials start their officiating career officiating youth hockey, making it up through the ranks as their officiating skill increases. USA Hockey defines certain levels of their officials and so does Hockey Canada and the International Ice Hockey Federation.
Currently, many youth officials quit after a few games, mainly due to verbal abuse from parents, coaches and players. In the US and Canada, news stories pop up from now and then that describes physical abuse on youth officials, in addition to verbal abuse. These problems were addressed in Hockey Canada's "Relax, it's just a game"-campaign, started in 2002.
A youth official can usually move up the ladder to juniors after about 2 years of officiating, and after a few years more up to senior hockey. This is of course, just as with players, different for each individual as their skill-curves are differently shaped.
Many current and former officials feel that their officiating career has aided them in their professional life as well, being more comfortable with handling critical decisions and upset individuals. The combinations of CEO or lower-level boss along with being an official and police officer along with officiating is quite common in many countries.
Read more about this topic: Minor Ice Hockey
Famous quotes containing the word officials:
“To name oneself is the first act of both the poet and the revolutionary. When we take away the right to an individual name, we symbolically take away the right to be an individual. Immigration officials did this to refugees; husbands routinely do it to wives.”
—Erica Jong (b. 1942)
“The conflict between the men who make and the men who report the news is as old as time. News may be true, but it is not truth, and reporters and officials seldom see it the same way.... In the old days, the reporters or couriers of bad news were often put to the gallows; now they are given the Pulitzer Prize, but the conflict goes on.”
—James Reston (b. 1909)
“The ordinary man is an anarchist. He wants to do as he likes. He may want his neighbour to be governed, but he himself doesn’t want to be governed. He is mortally afraid of government officials and policemen.”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)