Following nearly two decades behind the whistle, long-time referee Karen Brown was recognized last month with the Mike Bugaida Award for female with outstanding dedication to the North Zone Referees’ Program.
Brown received the award from the North Zone Referees Committee at their annual general meeting April 24.
“It was a very big honour and a complete surprise to me,” she said. “The association notified Westlock Minor Hockey that this award was coming and they made sure I got to this meeting unbeknownst to me. My husband knew, and everybody else knew, but I didn’t know.”
A director from the committee who organized the reffing clinics in the zone nominated Brown.
“This gentleman, Dean Ziegler, he taught my first course nearly 20 years ago,” she said. “He trained me the first year I ever qualified and he reminded me of that the other evening.”
Brown has spent 19 years reffing with the Westlock Minor Hockey Association and the last five as referee-in-chief where she assigned officials to games.
She stepped down from that role at the end of this season, but planned on putting in one more year as a ref to earn a 20-year pin, she said with a laugh.
“I don’t really know why I like doing it,” she mused. “I’m a bit bossy, that’s probably part of it. I’m actually a pretty confident person so that helps. It’s not the easiest thing to be a referee because people like to blame people for the breakdown of a game or a situation.”
Brown has collected plenty of wisdom through her time on the ice, and one lesson she has taken away is that human nature is a tough thing to manage.
“You better have the confidence, you better have the thick skin, you better have the ability to think quickly on you’re feet … If you don’t have any of those things, you probably won’t continue on because you won’t enjoy it.”
Although Brown was recognized for her 19 years, her career spans longer than that, starting with reffing ringette when she was 21. That commitment lasted a decade but she continued with playing the sport when she got married and had her son.
When her son turned six and it was his time to play hockey, Brown quit ringette because of the travel time and took up reffing for minor hockey when she was 36.
“I thought, ‘Hmm, I think I can ref hockey. If I can ref ringette, I can skate, why can’t I ref hockey,’” she recalled. “One of the things I really liked about it is that I’ve always loved to skate and it was allowing me to keep skating.”
Although she has reffed up to the bantam level and the occasional midget game, which can be tough to keep up with skating from end to end, her favourite is novice.
“I love novice because they’re so teachable and they still accord you a certain amount of respect that it seems like the older kids lose,” she said. “The thing that happens with novice is the teaching that goes on as a referee — teaching the kids where to be, where to go on the ice, where to stand when you’re starting.”
Some have even decided to become refs themselves, giving her more of an opportunity to know the kids.
“I love reffing and if you’re there long enough, as many years as I’ve been there, you start to know who the kids are and talk to them on the ice. You almost have a small bit of a relationship with them.”
For a time she also reffed the women’s hockey games on Sunday nights, as well as the girls bantam team.
But most of the time she was the only woman on the ice.
“It’s a little strange being in a man’s world,” she said, noting that there was only ever one female ref in the association, and that was a bantam player.
Over time she also noticed that women and men handle the job differently. Her first clue was watching her son ref a novice game when he was 13. A player had been injured and she watched from the stands as the coach berated the two young referees the entire time. When she asked her son about it afterwards, he brushed it off and said he hadn’t noticed.
“It’s kind like the men being from Mars and the women from Venus,” she said.
“We are different and we handle things differently and I probably take things tougher than a man would, from what is said to me. I take it home and I muse over it and let it bug me more than I guy would.”
Even so, she always felt like she could do the job well.
“I never felt inferior as a woman doing the boys’ games. I never felt like I shouldn’t be doing it and a guy should be doing it. Never.”
