[Collin Stiers]

I want to say that I think the refs I interacted with this season were truly wonderful and hard working, reffing this game is a really hard job, things move fast and there are a lot of robots and actions to track. Often when making a call at the end of the match refs have to rely on their memory to look back, which is imperfect, and they have to make the best calls they can. There can be cases where there is no "right" or "wrong" call, it all depends on how a specific event is remembered and interpreted.

Given all that I think that refs work very hard make the best calls they can in a high speed game, and I think they did a wonderful job.

There were many times this season I used the question box to talk to the head ref, and they could have gotten annoyed at my repeated visits, but instead I felt that they really valued what I was saying and took it into consideration, and they gave me an open and honest explanation of their call. I think this interaction helped the all of us better understand the factors involved and helped the refs to make better calls, and me to avoid penalties and drive better

One final thing, it seems like we only ever hear about the refs when people think they screwed up, perhaps we should do more to recognize the refs who do good, so with that in mind, three cheers to the refs who volunteered in the chesapeake district, great job guys.