USA Hockey trip - Fairbanks, AK - Day 2

08.23.2010
Tara is a SOLID tour guide, super solid.

After only a few hours of sleep, we got up early and were off to the Riverboat tour. Tara and I were waiting to board and realized that we were the youngest ones there, most of the people were over 65. The tour takes you down river and makes a few stops at a dog sled training facility, a fish camp and we also watched a float plane take off. The boat brings you to a little area that is set up and they give you a few presentations on settler life as well as native living. We saw some reindeer (reindeer are captive and caribou are not capative) and we met Dave Monson who was married to Susan Butcher a 4 time idirod champion; he has relatives in MN and signed a book for Miss Ava.

http://www.riverboatdiscovery.com/

http://www.iditarod.com/learn/awards.html

Tara and I headed over and met up with John and drove out to Denali National Wildlife Refuge. The three of us climed up a big rock, really big (remember I am not a height friendly person), hiked down a stream and took a ton of photos. We saw a shrew, a groundhog and a ton of birds, but no bears...

We headed back to town and stopped for lunch at the Alaskan Brewing Company; super solid Alaskan oatmeal beer and food. On the way back we made a pit stop at Skinny Dick's, but it was closed so hopefully John will send me out a t-shirt:)

USA Hockey trip - Fairbanks, AK - Day 1

08.22.2010
Flying out of Minneapolis to Salt Lake City, with a two hour layover. We circled the airport for 45 minutes and every time we came around we hit a spot with some super bad turbulence. The lady next to me and I were pale and almost lost our cookies by the time we landed.

Flying out of of Salt Lake City to Fairbanks. We got on the runway and had to go back as the air conditioning was not working. We finally got going and made it into Fairbanks early on Monday morning (23rd) about an hour late.

Had a rental car reservation with Hertz but they didn't have any cars so they decided to switch me to Budget. Another story for another time...

Called Tara and she gave me directions to her house; what a trooper waiting up or getting up so early to make sure I made it there (but this is only the beginning, you will see, she took very good care of me the entire trip!).

First Women's Hockey Draft

kristie Minkoff sent this over to me:
Here is a clip from CTV on the CWHL draft
http://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwatch.ctv.ca%2Fnews%2Fnews%2Ftop-picks%2Ffirst-cwhl-draft%2F%23clip336081&h=ddc71

made WCCO news!

Jul 28, 2010 6:43 pm US/Central
Referee Convention Hits Downtown Minneapolis MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO)

The referee convention took place in downtown Minneapolis this week.
To many, they are nameless -- the referee. Now, put together about a thousand of them and bring them to downtown Minneapolis for the week and you've got quite a national convention.Here, it's all about coming to learn and to gain self confidence.There is the topic of replay in the NFL."As technology has improved, it's going to be more involved in the game. And I feel like it's a real challenge. And if you're an official and you're afraid of technology, go do something else," said Mike Pereira, former VP NFL official. "Technology is something to look at as that ultimate challenge. And if you look at it, in an instant replay situation, 70 percent of the time it proves you right."There is the challenge of keeping up with the high-level athletes."The game keeps changing. It's different than when I played, it's different than it was when it was 10 years ago," Big Ten Director of Officials Bill Corollo said. "And if we don't keep adjusting to keep up with the game -- and sometimes we fall behind, as officials and we do not keep up with the athletes and what they're doing."Then there is the networking. Kelli Rolstad worked the gold medal women's hockey game in Vancouver, but she doesn't come here to talk hockey."For me to meet an NCAA basketball referee or a volleyball, or soccer, or different more experienced female officials, it was really neat connection for me, cause I could ask them questions that I might not be able to ask in locker rooms," she said. For locals, like Rolstad, for the big college, professional and even the youth officials just breaking in, it's a week to feel something rare -- appreciated."This is kind of meant to be a celebration, a feel good kind of thing," Kevin Merkle said, of the MSHSL. "There's nothing wrong with that because our people give a lot of dedication and you don't get rich refereeing, at least not very many people do, let's put it that way. So for them to get a feel for the impact that they have and to have some feel good, that's all part of it, too."

Referees Convention Hits Downtown Minneapolis News

Clip: http://www.wcco.com/video/?id=81902@wcco.dayport.com

Article: http://wcco.com/sports/referee.convention.minneapolis.2.1830423.html

Officiate Minnesota and more!

Over the weekend there was an officials convention in Minneapolis, MN. This was not only hockey officials but officials from just about every sport: hockey, volleyball, la cross, tennis, football, baseball, basketball and even rodeo.

Saturday was "Officiate Minnesota" and I was asked to speak on the "Women in Officiating" panel. This was a huge honor as the other 3 women on the panel were huge ground breakers for women in officiating and at the administration level.

They asked us questions about how we got started, some challenges that we had to overcome among other things.
It was pretty cool to have some of the male hockey officials there to support me including Mach, Buzz, Shepherd and Uncle Tommy.
NCAA Basketball: Mary Struckhoff is the NCAA National Coordinator of Women’s Basketball Officiating
NCAA Volleyball: Joan Powell is a volleyball official, former collegiate coach and former player and some other things too, but that's all I could find on google she also has more one-liners than I do!
MN Official: Vicki Davis (1st of everything as a female in the sport) is one of the NCAA Regional Officiating Advisors
Moderator: Brenda Holmgren is a teacher at Elk River high school, officiates a ton of sports and is a ton of fun

Brian Mach, Steve Tatro, Greg Shepherd and CJ Bearline were also on a hockey specific panel during the day and did a great job representing us! Kronschnabel was the moderator.
Walt was on the steering committee and put a ton of work in.

Sunday was a leadership seminar from 1-4:30 and there were panels on recruitment and retention of officials, training and legal issues. Kronschnabel did a great job!

Sunday night began with some opening speakers and social time. This is when all the big names came in.

Monday was full of speakers and panels and a nice luncheon. The hockey specific panel included Terry Gregson, Matt Leaf, Dave LaBuda and Brad Watson. Steve Tatro was the moderator.

Tuesday we were there for most of the day, but Matt, Steve, Brad, Butch and I took a trip over to the Twinkie's stadium for private tour by Eric Curry and Dave St. Peter stopped by to say hello. Curry officiates DI college basketball. The night ended with the golden whistle banquet and award presentation.

1987 / 1991 World Series Championship Trophies and Mr. Matt at the field

CH Robinson Article II

http://chr222/chronicle/index.cfm

CHRW Employee Officiates USA-Canada

Gold Medal Hockey Game

IT business analyst Kelli (O'Brian) Rolstad had the opportunity of a lifetime at the Winter Olympic Games in Vancouver this past February. She was chosen to be a linesman for the USA-Canada women's hockey gold medal game, putting her on the ice and in the middle of all the action.
For pictures from Kelli's experience, click on the image gallery above. To read the full story of Kelli's journey to Olympic ice, click here (link to Coon Rapids paper article - below in blog).
Posted on 03/17/2010

USA Hockey's Womens Nationals in Green Bay, WI

03.25.2010 Thursday

Went to work and scrambled over to Ted and Candy's house. Ted was gracious enough to bring me to the airport and let me leave the car at their house. I spent more time on the 1 hour drive to the house, the 20 min drive to the airport and the 1 hour before the flight at the airport than I did on the 50 minute flight to Green Bay, WI. But I am certainly not complaining as it beats the drive and after a full day of work I would be pretty tired. Got into Green Bay and waited a short time for Jill, as her flight was delayed, due to winds in Chicago and made it to the Garden Hilton Inn in the rental (with butt heaters).

We met up with what was left of the group at the sports bar behind the hotel. Boy! I had forgotten what a smoking bar was like and with only 2 pairs of clothing and 1 winter jacket with I would remember the rest of the weekend...

03.26.2010 Friday Yes, I took the day off from the "real job".

Tater and Shaneman (other 2 supervisors) gave me the late starting rink for the day DePere at 8:45. I sat upstairs and started on the evaluations, but found out later that we weren't doing formal evaluations; that was in the meeting I missed the night before... Tater came over to the rink and I headed over to the community (3 sheet) rink at around 5pm. I stopped and grabbed lunch on the way as I had not had much since breakfast. At the other rink, with the 3 sheets going, pretty much at the same time, it was very similar to what Rinde and I had to do at College Clubs. We ran from rink to rink hoping to watch at least of period of everyone. Ran into Rinde, Jerry Kennedy and others over the weekend. We got out of the rink around 11:30pm and headed back to the hotel for a meeting and got kicked out of the lobby (no beer and no gatherings were allowed in the lobby). We were tired but hungry so Shaneman and I went out to Perkins, as it was the only place open.

Cory / Jessica / Kelli (boy do I look tired)

03.27.2010 Saturday

I got the Community Rink and the first game was at 7am, but we met in the lobby for a 6am meeting, then off to McDonald's for a bite and off to the rink. I floated between the 3 rinks and gave evaluations while watching. Tater said it was OK to give feedback if they asked; most all asked. The best part was the feedback was given and then I could see most everyone working on those things on the ice; it was a lot of warm and fuzzy moments. I ate lunch at the rink as they brought in Subway and had hamburgers, dogs and soup. We had an 18 person shoot out on the last game of the night and ended up leaving the rink pretty close to midnight. Finally got back to the hotel and tired and hungry again so we went for steaks. OK, so at midnight in Green Bay steaks are hard to come by... we ended up at Perkins again. Mistake: ordering steaks at Perkins.

03.28.2010 Sunday

Back to the Community rinks for the 8:45 games, all the game at this location today. Tater set Shaneman and I up with Olive Garden take out for lunch; very good! I watched a few games talked to a ton of the participants and took off around 4pm to catch my flight home. The Airport was empty. It reminds me a ton of the Grand Forks airport, but less people there. The security was asking why we there were so many people coming through with pucks and whistles. Uncle Ted picked me up from the airport, hung out and talked to Ted and Candy at the house for a bit and headed home to see Cory and the kids.

Over all the games went very well we did have more penalty shots that I have seen in a long time mostly for covering the puck in the crease.

We had a few 5 and Games and a Match for kicking, but none were challenged and went smoothly for the most part.

Jackie and Larra writing up a game report with Shaneman and Kelli looking on

I did have my first "formal complaint" from a coach about an official, but it wasn't as bad as I would have thought it to be.

Oh, and it's true, the only thing in Green Bay is Lambeau Field; I will have to go back and get a tour someday...

Theme of the weekend: "skate it like a junior game"
Repetitive Points: pull the rope / goal line and blue line movement /

more presence on the ice

on the nhl page...

http://www.nhlofficials.com/display_news.asp?articleID=461

2010 Vancouver Women's Olympic Officials

Baldwin, WI media

http://baldwinbulletin.blogspot.com/

March 18, 2010 post

ACHA DI DII College Club National Tourney - Supervisor

03.11.10 - 03.14.2010 (Thurs - Sunday)

ACHA DI and DII College Club Finals the the Schwan's Super Rink in Blaine, MN.
Thurs night after work I was off to the rink in Blaine to supervise the 12 women officials working the college club national tournament. Laura Rinde came in from California to be the President and I took the Vice President spot:)

Participants: Ceci Morris (CO), Leah O'Brien (CO), Liz Kellerman (CA), Jessica Hahnle (CO), Krissy Langley (MN), Annette Lin (WA), Brenda Reinen (WI), Jerilyn Glenn (AZ), Candace Utecht (MN), Kristin Moore (OH), Danielle Dillabough (NY), Debbie McLaughlin (MN), and Karly Schoeman (MN). Supervisors: Rinde and OB.

I took Friday off from the "real job" and was in the rink till late Sunday afternoon.
Thurs night I took Rinde down to the bar in St. Paul to meet some of the boys high school tourney officiating crew. She met our boy Dokken... yes, Dok you get plug, but only because you worked the 4 OT game. Sat night over our short lunch break all the girls along with Cyndi Roberson came back to the house for pizza, subs, pool and a short intro to The Hangover. I skated 2 games on Sat night and loosing an hour to daylight savings time we had a late night with a 3 OT game getting over at 12.30 and up for our first game on Sunday morning at 8.30am.
The girls did a great job! We had 2 hearings; this was my first experience in this role, but Rinde did a great job teaching me the ropes.

Cyndi and Marshall Stevenson

Rachel found me at the rink; Roger was playing in the Ironman up there.

Roger, Rachel, Trent and Evelyn

Theme for the weekend: Let you whistle tell a story...

and more photos from the games in Vancouver

more Olympic photos

After the Gold Medal Game! Ulla / Aina / Kelli / Heather / Zuzanna

USA Hockey at the Hockey House
Meg / Leah / Kelli

On the way to the Closing Ceremony

The Medal Ceremony

Opening Ceremony

USA Hockey officials!