Meeting the group in Zurich

After a few hours of relaxing in the hotel in Zurich airport it was time to go for dinner and see all of the girls. 

Seeing old friends

For the next three weeks our tight knit group of girls forms a little family as we all look out for each other and do pretty much everything together from eating breakfast, training in the gym, reffing games through to dinner in the evenings. 

For a lot of us we have become close friends and keep in touch in-between tournaments.  We all share a passion for officiating ice hockey and one of the greatest experiences of being at international tournaments is the friends you make from all around the world.

I was really excited to see everyone and it helped to relax me a bit to be able to just chat and catch-up with them all.  Everyone is a bit anxious and those that have travelled from North America were a little tired and struggling with jet lag.  But we all enjoyed the meal and caught up on stories from the last few months.  Several of us got married over the summer last year so there were lots of fun stories and updates.

Keeping crazy traditions

As a group we all work extremely hard and focus when we are at tournaments.  But at the same time there are usually a couple of days break from games during the tournament when as a group we get to enjoy each others’ company and see a little bit of the town or city we are refereeing in.

Calgary 2008

I was really excited to see Therese from Sweden and Denise from Canada.  They are both linesman who I have known since 2008 when we met at the inaugural U18 Women’s World Championship in Calgary.  On our rest day at that tournament we went to Banff springs as a group.  The three of us had forgotten our bikinis and so we ended up shopping together. For fun we decided to get matching bikinis, now known as the ref bikinis, which we bring to all tournaments with us.

Since then we made a promise that if the three of us ever worked a tournament again together we would go out and buy matching outfits for the amusement of our colleagues and for some light relief on our days off.

Burlington Vermont 2012

All three of us were together again in 2012 for the Women’s World Championships in Burlington, Vermont.  On our rest day there we went to laser-quest as a group and again we shopped for some matching outfits.  Unfortunately we didn’t think through our outfit choice as much as we should have done and opted for fluorescent pink gym tops which served only to make us easy targets in the ultra-violet light of the laser-quest!

Ottawa 2013

In 2013 we were together again for the 2013 Women’s World Championships in Ottawa and this time we decided to go all out for a full outfit for dinner on our day off.  Our classiest effort yet and again our colleagues were amused and loved our dedication to the matching outfit club.

This Olympics is likely to be the last tournament that all three of us work together and so we know we need to finish our outfit club in style.  As we packed our existing three outfits into our bags I think we all tried to convince ourselves and each other that it was the other two who were the instigators and the crazy ones ... in reality we are probably all as crazy as each other!  We have exchanged a few emails with ideas of what we can come up with as outfits for our last tournament together.  Watch this space for an update later on in the tournament!

Getting ready to fly to Sochi

Our charter flight leaves in the morning and so everyone headed off to bed reasonably early tonight.  There is a gym in the hotel and a few of us mentioned using it before breakfast tomorrow to stretch our legs out a bit.  I expect we will all be in there at 7am fighting over the one treadmill they have and trying to keep calm despite the fact that within a few hours we will be at the Olympics!