Opinion: The timeout-ending whistle should be optional (JT discretion)

Officiating (Public Read-Only)
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Today, Rule 1.3 states, “the end of a timeout is marked by a long rolling whistle”. I think we should amend this to add, “, if necessary.”

As far as I can recall this whistle exists for one and only one purpose: To let people know that the timeout is over. Does it do that? Only sometimes – only in the times when people NEED to be alerted to this fact – when teams aren’t both on the track, or when officials are dillydallying in the middle.

And it frequently backfires. I’d guess that at least once a game it backfires. What does backfiring mean? It means that some but not all skaters begin actively blocking. Some do not expect contact and others are hitting them. It is dangerous when this happens.

One part of this is the fact that the jam-start whistle is short (so, the moment you hear it, the jam has started – this is necessary because clocks depend on it), and you don’t know it’s gonna be a long whistle until after the jam has started, so to speak.

The backfiring ONLY happens when there are skaters from both teams lined up on the track ready to go and the JT adds the confusing and unnecessary noise that is mandated by the ruleset. And let’s be real – it’s the JT that knows it. For this purpose, JTs a few years back also started adding additional procedures to de-risk, such as yelling “NEXT WHISTLE ENDS THE TIMEOUT.” This should be recognized as perverse – we shouldn’t need to add extra verbal cues to explain the same rule to the skaters after every timeout, so this should have been a clue to us that the whistle is not always necessary and is sometimes harmful. But IT DOESN’T WORK – sometimes the skaters start anyway, as a function of where the JT is and how loud they are and…let’s be real…whether the skaters are paying attention at all.

But what DOES work? The five seconds warning! When the JT yells FIVE SECONDS, everyone pays attention and knows the jam is ready to go.

What ALSO works? The long rolling whistle, when it would be useful for the purpose of alerting people to get onto the track! I.e. when one or both teams aren’t there when the timeout ends!

So here’s my take: The Jam Timer knows which one to do, every time, because they’re standing right there, and they’re the one responsible. We should let them.

OK, but more specifically, we should alter or clarify the rules to allow this to be optional as part of the procedures. That would allow us to actually test it and see how it works without Breaking A Rule. It means we could test it in regulation or sanctioned play, without it being considered an officiating error.

What do others think?

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That’s not my experience. In my neck of the woods this is exceedingly rare outside of rookie scrimmages.

Apparently it doesn’t in your area. If it really did work, people wouldn’t be anticipating a Jam start at the rolling whistle.

And just because there are skaters lined up on the track doesn’t mean everybody is ready to go. There may be NSOs checking some paperwork, benches discussing strategy, etc. The JT would have to check for all of these before deciding to skip the whistle, at which point just blowing the whistle is way more efficient. And the effect of not doing this check are exacerbated by the fact that “5 seconds” calls are much more likely to not stand out a lot from the venue noise than a rolling whistle.

Also, for ORs there is mandatory paperwork that requires the length of the timeout to be written in. For other types of timeout there is optional paperwork that asks for this. So if the rolling whistle became optional, we would need additional procedures that explain how the length of a timeout is to be determined when no rolling whistle is blown.

In summary: The problem you are seeing is better addressed by teaching skaters the rules.

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Locally, we’ve added a verbal queue to prevent this confusion (which happens more often with Juniors than Adults.)

  • At approximately 0:56 “Next whistle ends {type of time out.}”
  • Rolling Whistle at 1:00
  • “Next whistle starts the jam. Five seconds.”
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@Speedy, whether or not it backfires often, I think the more important thing is that it is unnecessary noise when everyone is ready to go anyway.

When I say “what does work? the five second warning,” I mean that when the JT says “five seconds” everybody knows that the next whistle will start the jam. But even when they don’t stand out, the jam-start whistle is at least no worse if it is a surprise than the first sound of the long-rolling-whistle that is indistinguishable from a jam-start whistle.

On ORs, I agree that the paperwork would need to change, but right now I’m just asking that the rules allow us to play with this, without making the game “not derby” / “not regulation.”

The comment of, “better addressed by teaching skaters the rules,” strikes me as quite patronizing to skaters and also fundamentally the same as so many other situations where skaters forget, don’t know, don’t learn, etc.

@anon24594899 , I address “next whistle ends the timeout” in my original post as an ineffective solution to a problem that shouldn’t exist. If you need to say it, everyone’s ready, you should just say five seconds and start the jam. (But the rules do not allow this.)

“Next whistle starts the jam” is also wholly redundant with the “five seconds” verbal cue.

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I don’t agree with this statement. The whole “next whistle ends the timeout” is for those nearby - in part so that skaters don’t instinctively react as if the jam has started, but also in part so they can brace themselves for the loud noise near to them - especially if they are near the pivot line. The latter part is a good accessibility practice.

It doesn’t necessarily mean everyone is ready and paying attention to the Jam Timer though. In particular the Penalty Box staff and the SBO are often located far from the JT, yet need to react instantly to that Jam Starting Whistle. If the venue is a bit noisy, or if anyone is a bit hard of hearing, or even just if someone is speaking to them, they may not be able to even hear the “five seconds”. The rolling whistle is loud and distinctive, and makes sure that everyone is paying attention and ready for things to start.

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I should have included more detail regarding preventing confusion. Many of the procedures for jam timers specify making information clear to the audience, not just those on the track. Verbal cues are useful on the track, but whistles and hand signals are more reliable for conveying information from anywhere in the audience. Similar to Twixxi’s examples, there are cases where this whistle signal is useful in ways that may not be apparent to the jam timer’s judgment.

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I disagree with making the rolling whistle optional or sometimes necessary.
I think it’s important.
1 minute expires on a TTO, rolling whistle, everyone knows the time out is over - so if the other team also wants a TTO, or an OR or the officials need an OTO, there is a signal that they need to do that or wait for the jam to start.

As a JT, I don’t say “next whistle ends the time out” and seldom announce “end of time out” etc. Rolling whistle and then in position waiting to announce 5 seconds.

“5 seconds” SHOULD have everyone on track, most of us know that that doesn’t doesn’t always work - how often does a jam get called dead cos the jammer isn’t in position…

If skaters trying to play derby after the rolling whistle, I would assume the whistle isn’t clear or the skaters aren’t used to hearing it in training/scrimmages. I usually find it’s only an issue for newer skaters or those who don’t often scrimmage with trained JTs .

I am intrigued by the discussion this will bring and everyones perspectives.

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I’m usually an official during the game.

I’d prefer there always be a timeout-ending whistle. If I’m doing paperwork or talking to another official or any of the other 1000s of things I do during breaks in game play, it helps indicate to me that “we’re back” and I should return to my position.

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I’ve seen this happen frequently (twice in a sanctioned game this past weekend).

I suspect the best way to address this is to improve the consistency of the signals, including verbal cues. Making the rolling whistle optional would result in less consistency and might exacerbate the problem.

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It is also not my experience that skaters often start playing at the rolling whistle.

So far the audience is entirely absent of this discussion and I don’t think it should be. The rolling whistle is also a signal to the audience that gameplay is about to resume.

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In my experience as a jam timer, there is literally no improvement to the consistency of the signals or verbal cues that will help this. However, I have been able to help it by walking over to the skaters and saying “hey excuse me, please plug your ears, I am going to do the rolling whistle.”

Maybe that’s ok? But, I do not think that anything standardized will help because once things are standardized they’re too easy to ignore.

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The false start on the rolling whistle happens fairly frequently in our area. Most jam timers around here preface it with “This is NOT your whistle”

I wonder if there is a compromise that could work by instead of a rolling whistle - which can quite often come out cut short and sounding like a jam start if it’s a newer JT who is still getting used to the role - could it instead be 4 short blasts like for ending a jam?
Everyone associates those with stopping playing and they’re fairly unmistakable so it should be less likely to get a false start.

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ThatDumbB you might be on to something, but it might be better to change the jam-start whistle than the timeout-ending whistle. Here’s my thinking.

Jams starts with a “short” whistle. That means that the first moment of whistle is the one that matters. So any whistle when you’re ready to go is going to feel like a short whistle. Four short whistle start with a single short whistle, then there are more. A long whistle begins as a short whistle but then keeps going. A long rolling whistle goes on even longer.

This weekend at a game I saw a ref call a penalty using a long whistle, between jams. That was a mistake, but the jam started because at the first moment of a whistle we don’t know if it’s short or long, and waiting around will lose advantage.

We also frequently find that JTs are starting jams with long whistles. We can correct and remind and correct and remind, but it feels like a losing battle at this point.

WHAT IF we brought back double-whistle starts? To have the jam start on a double whistle means the first moment of a long or long-rolling whistle wouldn’t be mistaken for a jam start. Skaters would need to listen for whether it’s a long, long-rolling whistle because the second tweet wouldn’t happen. And JTs would be doing the same thing as JRs so they’d probably self-regulate as to having their whistles be short.

That said, it’s a maybe too big of a change for what might not be a very big problem.

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I wouldn’t be adverse to the double-whistle start for a jam…

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I like this suggestion. 4 whistles indicates something has ended (jam or TO) and a new jam must begin within 30 seconds (unless another TO is called, or if after a TO, it can start early if everybody is ready to go). We could also use the jam-ending hand signal - right now the rolling whistle doesn’t have a corresponding hand signal, which is a gap worth closing for deaf/HOH participants. And I do support some sort of signal at the end of every TO - the audience for the signal isn’t just the skaters on the track - it’s also a valuable heads-up for officials and bench staff.

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…though, we start TOs with 4 whistles too, so there’s probably a better solution?

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right now the rolling whistle doesn’t have a corresponding hand signal, which is a gap worth closing for deaf/HOH participants

Agree - there USED to be one (the circular arm motion), but that’s no longer an official cue, even though it is still used by those of us that learnt to JT when it was a thing (And subsequently teach to the new JT’s that come through our ranks).

I would love to see the official return of it

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+1 for inclusivity! Also, for those who use Electronic Whistles, a circular arm motion is essentially how you achieve that sound.

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Could combine them. Four whistles immediately followed by the rolling whistle. The first part would remind people that active play has stopped, the latter would tell people that play is about to resume.

This would also differentiate it from situations such as a TTO immediately followed by an OR.

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It happened at one of the regionals so not just rookies.

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