In response to the person concerned about reffing and bouting: it’s not fairly common in the US in my experience. There is one woman in my league who skates for our A team and has just started reffing for our B team, so it’s not completely unheard of, just not terribly common. I think this might be just because most of the top highly competative teams are from the US so it’s hard to make the time commitment to skate well enough to be highly competative and ref well enough to ref highly competative games. Learning the rules is one thing, but learning them well enough that you can see what’s happening on the track and apply them is a whole other animal. Not that I’m saying leagues outside the US aren’t competative, we just have the largest concentration of teams at the highest level. Whatever league you play for will likely have attendance and committee participation requirements to be eligible to bout and learning the rules the way refs do in addition to those bout eligibility requirements will only work if you’re really dedicated and have the spare time to do it all. If you have that, then go for it, skating will make you a better ref and reffing will make you a better skater imo. --- cellothebandit