My 5th NSO Role - Penalty Box Manager

Ah-ha! I've practiced this twice in scrimmages but it was finally my turn to be a Penalty Box Manager at a bout...and I was bricking it!

I've penalty timed before, that's fine. But this was timing jammers. This was being responsible for the length of power jams. Being responsible for timing jammers equally. There were lots of methods to learn depending on the situation, the length of the penalty, when they enter the box, etc. Reading through all the scenarios made my head spin, but I studied them with great care and even made little prompt cards just in case I needed reminding. (Looking back, I was probably over exaggerating the seriousness of it, but it is pretty important!)

The bout was the Heartlands South East Opener and my team were playing. When we arrived at the venue, my head went blank. I kept trying to remember my scenarios and just ended up getting myself confused. A fellow NSO tested me on them, and I nailed it, but I was still panicking.

My stress didn't stop until the end of the first bout. I could feel my heart pounding in my chest the whole time, but still managed to play it cool. I timed jammers successfully, I wrote numbers down if they were in the queue or if they'd commited a penalty box violation (I may have been a bit too forgiving when a couple of skaters destroyed the penalty box, but the floor was slippy and I found it hard to judge.) The only time I felt a bit rubbish was when a jammer was in the box and another got sent it, so sent the first one out, looked at my stopwatches to work out the time and heard "JAMMER, TWO MINUTES!" being shouted by an inside ref. I double checked, acknowledged it and timed accordingly. Apparently, they'd be trying to get my attention for a while but I had just been glued to my stopwatches! I'll make sure to look up next time!
I even had the situatiuon where I had to hold both jammers for 10 seconds and no one actually shouted at me to let one go! Woohoo!

By the time it got to the second bout, I was a lot calmer. I did bumble ocassionally (I called a jammer the wrong colour at one point) but I did it, without any major issues, without having to use my prompt cards, my fellow penalty box timers were awesome, the skaters well behaved, and I think I did pretty well!