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!
A friend just linked me to your blog - It's super cool! I love this different perspective on the olympics and I superlove you guys' matching outfits :D
ReplyDeleteDenise's dad sent me your blog! I'm looking forward to your posts on your experiences. Also to see the new group outfit!
ReplyDelete