Opinion: Uniform Violations are common, but they have an impact spectrum

Officiating (Public Read-Only)
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Rule 1.2: “Each team must have a jersey of the same base color, such that uniform colors of the two teams playing are of high contrast.”

Sanctioning’s Uniform policy, rule 1: “Teams must wear uniforms with one clearly dominant identifiable color that is of high contrast to the color of their opponent.”

It is my belief that the term “base color” and the term “clearly dominant identifiable color” mean the same thing; the sanctioning doc clarifies the ruleset. It does not mean 51% of one color, it means it should be unambiguous what the color is. If you bring in a 4-year-old into the venue and say “hey what color is that shirt,” the 4 year old should be able to answer immediately and not be confused at all. If the 4-year-old is confused or says the “accent color” instead of the “base color,” the uniform is in violation of Rule 1.2 as clarified by the Sanctioning Policy. (The 4 year old can sit next to the GTO.)

But – so what? What do we do? I would like to suggest that the recent clarification about Failure to Exit penalties gives us an impact spectrum for uniform violations, which is, meaningfully delayed track departure after a penalty is called, or meaningfully delayed penalty calls due to the ambiguity.

Example: Water City’s uniforms are blue-on-blue (the sea and the sky, to focus on their name, “water” city), according to them. So, they are the Blue team, according to them. But the sky has so many clouds, which are white. The four-year-old inside all of us can’t really tell if the uniforms are blue or white. Water City’s captain says that they ensured that 60% of the jersey is blue, way more than 50! This is still illegal, it still is in violation of Rule 1.2.

What do we do? Let them skate. But it’s illegal! Yes, but what is the impact?

  • The uniform violation has impact if an official calls WHITE and the skater remains on the track, failing to exit. The impact is that they stay on the track longer. In other words, they have to respond just as fast to WHITE as BLUE if blue is not clearly dominant. If the official says “white” it is not an error, it is the same sort of team-deceived-the-officials as a Jammer Ref calling it for a hips-tapping non-lead Jammer. We do our best but ultimately this is the team’s fault.

  • The uniform violation has impact if an official’s call is delayed to be sure they get the color right, when the color is ambiguous. We need to be really sure about getting the color right, in all cases, so some amount of delay is usual and acceptable, but if there is added delay due to the ambiguity of the color, that could be impactful. “Tweet! Wh–bl–WHITE no BLUE FOUR SIX EIGHT, FOREARMS” → this should probably be penalized as a uniform violation, due to the extra time the skater was allowed to remain on the track.

In both cases, their illegal uniform led to them staying on the track longer than they should have after committing a penalty. (If both happen, I would not call two extra penalties, just one, for delaying the track exit.)

The same applies to a skater who shows up for scrimmage or game with a grey shirt to play for the white team. Do we say they can’t skate? Of course not. But they have to respond to both white and grey, and if their illegal uniform delays calls or if it delays their exit, it has had impact.

The same applies to smudged marker on arms and armbands without visible numbers. It’s not clearly visible, so it’s illegal, and it has impact if it delays calls. The same applies to gold-on-white numbers that aren’t high contrast, so it’s illegal; it has impact if it delays calls. (We should of course continue to ask and warn to help prevent this, but if ignored, this is the philosophy I would use to penalize, now that I have convinced myself that it is both illegal and impactful.)

How to handle this? In the Captain’s meeting, a team should be told if their uniforms have an ambiguous color, or if their skater has a grey shirt, or if their numbers are hard to read, told that they can skate, and note that they need to respond to both colors or that they may get additional penalties. If you forget in the captain’s meeting or if it turns out to be ambiguous during gameplay, and it happens, issue a warning for the first delayed exit and then explain why.

I’ve been practicing or encouraging this for several years in less formalized terms – “yeah that uniform sucks, just tell them they have to respond to both,” to last weekend when I advised an HR to tell the team in their captains’ meeting that they’d need to respond to both colors.

What do you think?

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I wonder why nothing mentions the impact on the teams. Roller Derby City had ‘white’ scrimmage tops with green leaves on them and every time my league buddy has this shirt on, I assume she on team green (our league colours are white and green and this is what we scrimm in at practice).

At what point does a team have ground to stand on when bringing this up during a captain’s meeting?

It also seems confusing for pack refs. But considering pack refs, teams with one colour on the front and side and another common colour (black) as a side panel would also be confusing (and so unnecessary :sweat_smile:). But I figure that belongs more among ‘best practices’ instead of ‘violations’.

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In my view, the question of “the two teams’ uniforms are too similar to each other” is different and lower impact because that confusion affects both teams equally…neither team gains a competitive advantage by looking similar to the other team.

Versus, one team whose uniform is illegal gets to stay on the track longer after committing penalties because the officials are deceived into calling the wrong thing or can’t tell what to call. To me that’s enough impact to penalize, because we learned in the Failure to Exit that those few seconds matter.

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I agree Muffin. We routinely see accent colors that are all on top and usually include sleeves. So I’m seeing pink shoulders on the black team vs. Red teams with black accents. Its a mess for pack def sometimes.

With enough lead time and guidance i do believe we could get a uniform compliance committee together that would review and approve uniforms prior to orders being placed.

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I don’t think it’s even possible to pre-clear uniforms. This is probably why we haven’t done it yet. You have to see them on bodies in the venue’s lighting to really understand what they “look” like. By that point it’s too late to say “no” b/c the team already bought them and brought them.

I’ve seen teams wearing orange claim to be “red”. They’re red at their practice space but orange in their normal venue. Certain body shapes can accentuate different parts of a uniform, which can change the color ratio. I think someone (HR or GTO) needs to make this decision in situ.

But the main thrust of my post is to say, we should be more open to saying “that uniform is illegal” in-the-moment for a uniform that is fine in other venues, but still agreeing that we should let skaters play anyway, by defining the impact spectrum for the illegal uniform.

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Yes we used to approve uniforms for Playoffs and it was tough to do. This was in the days before sublimation, too, which changed things drastically.

Maybe a best practices document could be helpful? Things to think about?

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Bones, I feel like when we did approve uniforms for Playoffs we had a pretty robust set of best practices already (like that side panels couldn’t be wider than three inches?). And then in practice it often went the way Muffin describes. Or we sent them to Target to buy white t-shirts and sharpies and forced them to actually have a white jersey if it was really bad. But we should have those guidelines somewhere, I’ll be honest that I just kind of assumed teams/leagues were still given those guidelines.

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I’ll take a look at what we have in the different policies and then we can see if we need to adjust the wording on them. Also looking at policies, it might make sense to review where we keep things. For example we have about 3 different documents about the track, when maybe we just need one. Maybe if the uniform information is too spread out, things are getting missed and one uniform document might make sense?

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Whether or not we formalize policy at the top for Playoffs, or for sanctioned play, we’ll still have the same issues in more relaxed settings such as home games and scrimmages, so I still think it is worth discussing what is illegal and when to penalize, right?

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That may still be a good idea, so I’m not dropping it. I’m just wondering if we could suggest changes in team practices to help prevent the need for it.

If we make suggestions that uniforms are designed where there is one discernible base color, or that both colored uniforms are brought to every game so that decisions can be made on site, would that help?

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Yes it would help, especially at the top, but that’s not where the problem usually is. This happens when marker numbers get smudged and when a skater shows up to scrimmage in a grey t-shirt instead of a white one, and when someone forgets their uniform to a single-header and/or buys a t-shirt in the stands. This is a problem in the trenches.

We already have rules about this and they’re usually followed for regulateable sanctioned or tournament play. And like yeah, we can add more rules and examples and requirements and regulations, but then we’re going to tell entire teams that they have to throw out the new set of bright shiny uniforms they paid hundreds or thousands of dollars for? Or just tell them “you can’t skate?” We already do that with roster numbers in sanctioned games and it is heartbreaking.

Whether or not we help teams understand what the rules mean, my goal here is to understand what is legal and what is impactful, not so we can give skaters penalties and not to prevent skaters from skating, but so that we can play the game with an understanding that they have to get off the track if we call the non-predominant color, and to keep their arms refreshed on their own (but continue to remind them when it’s getting bad), and to maybe issue a penalty here and there instead of banning them from playing or making them throw their uniforms away…

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Forgive me if this is already in place, but is there a policy document anywhere that also mentions checking your jersey designs with multiple officials? It’s been done that way in both leagues I’ve been involved in and certain colours at least (magenta, turquoise) have been vetoed in the past by officials.

I once reffed a Teal vs Magenta game and… never again.

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If you mean the “called color” for a jersey, there is no policy that says any one person is in charge of deciding what the color is, which means that the it would fall to the Head Referee as the ultimate authority for the game.

So, the HR can say “this game will be called as blue vs red” if they determine that those are the apparent colors in the venue under the available lighting at game-time, and under my opinion in this post, issue uniform violations if they fail to respond to it resulting in prolonged time-on-the-track after a penalty has been correctly issued.

In my opinion the HR would need to be very clear about this before the game, ideally in the captains’ meeting.

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