Hello! My league plays at an indoor roller hockey rink. This past seasons officials have made us keep the bench doors closed during jams which makes it difficult in between jams to get skaters in and out. A few questions for anyone with insight. Is this an actual rule? Or official preference? Can we have chairs in front of the bench? Is their a limit on how many chairs? Thank you.
This sounds like venue safety considerations. From 3.2 of the risk management guidelines:
All doors or openings present in a BARRIER that lies within 10 feet (3.05 meters) of the OUTER
TRACK LINE must be closed or blocked off during active skating.
If the barrier is further away than that, then the 3.3 of those guidelines would apply:
The Penalty Box and team benches (if team benches are not in the INFIELD) , must be
located to the outside of the COMPETITION SURFACE (Zones B, C and D) in Zone E, but must
be placed at least 2 feet (.61 meters) away from the OUTER OFFICIATING LANE (or 12
feet/3.66 meters from the OUTER TRACK LINE.
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I appreciate the response. The barriers are about 15 feet from the track. So if im reading this correctly the doors do not need to be kept closed? I will look up the risk management considerations as well. Thank you!
There may be other safety considerations specific to the venue that have lead to the decision so I can’t say for definite that they do not need to be closed. For instance if those doors open outwards then they’d be considered a protrusion and at 15 feet from the track would have to be padded.
All rough surfaces, protrusions, or
sharp edges on a barrier within 15 feet (4.57 meters) of the OUTER TRACK LINE must be
padded.
There could be other things too, including the venue owners own risk assessments. Ultimately when it comes to safety officials have a lot of discretion, but it certainly could be worth having a discussion with them about it, finding out their reasons, and seeing if there is an acceptable safe compromise.
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It might be really helpful if you shared a photo of the venue, with the doors shown and the 15’ OPR lane taped out for us to look at…
Thank you. We are back at that venue on 11/16 for a game, ill take pictures. The OPR lane is 10 feet which we tape. Then we have the penalty box between both teams benches taped off and the team benches. We dont tape off the team benches. I need to reveiw the guidelines again, but it seems chairs would be prohibited within that 15 feet. One thing we can do is move the track further from the benches.
Chairs for the bench area are explicitly allowed within 12 feet, because they’re a common part of game set-up that insurance knows about and explicitly considered. Doors are different because they’re not consistent. Same goes for the penalty box. This is all listed in the risk management guidelines which are here: https://static.wftda.com/insurance/wftda-risk-management-guidelines.pdf
In the past, I’ve worked at leagues that had a “no open doors during the jam” process. It was annoying but I found that it became pretty natural after a few jams. Not ideal but it became pretty natural after a little while. After the five second call, the only time someone wouldn’t already be “out the door” is if the team legit forgot to field a blocker, which is itself pretty rare.
We also just put the JT in charge of “not starting the jam if the door is open,” so teams had the whole full 30 seconds for it each time. And if it opened mid-jam anybdy with a whistle would call it. (And any clock stoppage would result in an N penalty, which helped the bench staff remember. I don’t think I can remember any instance where the same team got two penalties for this.)
So I took measurements this past weekend and the bench doors are exactly 15 feet from the track. So it would be in our best interest to use chairs since closing and opening the benches can trip skaters up sometimes, like when the bench manager is calling the next line up.