Timing of Official Time Outs

Officiating (Public Read-Only)
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About ten years ago, a practice began to develop where officials would wait until the last possible second to call an Official Time Out (when needed). This would sometimes result in officials standing around waiting for the Line Up clock to wind down to 0 before starting to deal with whatever issue necessitated the OTO. The rationale was that taking OTOs before then effectively added time to the game and waiting reduced the impact of an officiating decision (or issue) on the overall length of play time.

OffCom worked to incorporate this practice into Officiating Practices. At the time, those changes needed to be approved by membership ballot. The practice was resoundingly rejected by the skaters. (While votes are never unanimous, this wasn’t close. I don’t recall the exact numbers, but it was a clear and unarguable majority in opposition.) At the time, skater representatives stated on the forum that they understood it might add time to the overall game, but they didn’t care (or wanted as much play time as possible). The direction from skaters was… “take an OTO as soon as you know you need to.”

Over the last couple of years, I’ve noticed a re-emerging practice of officials waiting for the five second warning to call an OTO. Again, sometimes this means that officials are literally standing there watching the clock wind before calling an OTO to fix whatever needs fixing. Personally, I believe this is in direct opposition of member sentiment and direction established through majority vote. But it’s been a while since we took that ballot, so I thought it might be good to check in.

I’m interested in skater opinion here. The reason many officials do this is clear and established (to minimize impact on playtime). Skaters, do you want officials to take an OTO when they know they need it, or would you prefer for them to wait until the five second warning (or for Lineup Time to expire)?

When should officials take an OTO?
  • Take the OTO when you know you need it.
  • Wait until the 5 Second warning.
  • Wait until Lineup Clock expires.
0 voters
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The way I see this usually implemented in Europe is that officials let the JT know that they might/will need an OT and then immediately start fixing what needs fixing. If they indeed are not done at 25/29 the JT will signal the OTO, but if they are done fast enough the next Jam starts on time. If someone were to delay the fixing because no OTO has been called yet, they’d almost certainly be told to change this.
(And while the knowledge about this is mostly gained from my officiating pov, my opinion, as expressed in the vote, is from my pov as a frequent C/A who cares about clock management.)

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Seconding what Speedy said here with relation to officiating practice in Oceania. The troubleshooting of the issue begins as soon as the officials are aware of it, in the hopes it can be resolved during the lineup time; only if the lineup time hits 5 seconds and it is clear the issue would not be resolved before jam commencement would we go to OTO. This not only minimizes the number of OTOs that have to occur (as many issues can be fixed in that time) but also minimizes the impact the officials have on the game clock.
I think saying officials are “standing there waiting for the clock to wind down” is either a mischaracterisation of events or reflective of a local officiating practice. If public opinion is to be sought on officiating practices it’s important we’re on the same page about what those practices actually are.

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I appreciate the responses, and it clearly shows a call for clarification. My opening paragraph was writing in the context of what was happening ~10+ years ago. I also said “sometimes”. Apologies that I implied it was commonly (and/or currently) happening. 100% agreed that typically officials are indeed already working to resolve whatever issue is at hand before stopping the period clock. (I would also add that officials made the exact same point when it was reviewed by membership last time too, but I also get that most folks don’t have access to or remember those threads.)

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For what it’s worth, I have personally, as JT, been told by HR’s not to call OTO’s until 25 seconds no matter what. That they will signal that they want an OTO but I should not call it for them or any other official until the 25 second mark. This has happened semi-recently and also historically.

So, “standing there waiting for the clock to wind down” is not a mischaracterization.

I agree with Ump that this is a practice worth standardizing as, per my three conditions for standardization note.

  1. Inconsistency. This is effectively explained in the OP.
  2. Frequency. This has happened to me recently and historically. This isn’t over-the-top frequent, but that is tempered by the
  3. Harm. Seconds matter and the inconsistency effectively adds inconsistency to the period clock.
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We do train our officials to wait for the 25, in the interest of not “messing with the game clock more than necessary”. I’m curious what the exact wording was when this came up previously and/or what the feedback was from skaters who opposed the practice? (I’m wondering if opposition was more about not wanting to “require” the practice, since sometimes it really does make sense to immediately call an OTO, but I don’t remember that vote.)

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I am generally cautious in trying to ascribe motives to the way membership votes. Every rep has their reason and rarely does membership speak with a clearly consistent voice (even when it appears unified). There is also almost always vocal dissent.

To my recollection, it was not a reluctance to standardize. The feedback I recall was that they didn’t care if it added a little more time to the game. It was more important to give the teams time to understand what was happening (and time to react to it).

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Since Ump initially requested feedback from skaters, I have held off on posting, but it’s been a week at this point. I won’t vote in the poll, to be sure.

To point out the obvious: the implicit assumption behind delaying the OTO is that it is bad if the timeout adds seconds to gameplay, so we should call it late to avoid doing that.

But… why? The rules say that that is what happens. The rules say OTOs add seconds to gameplay, and that officials can call OTOs. We voted on the rules. Why should following the rules be bad?

And even putting that aside - I am strongly of the opinion that the additional overhead of putting a timeout in queue for later is effort that could better be dedicated to solving whatever the situation is in the first place. I’m more likely to get the situation handled in 30 seconds if I DON’T have to worry about scheduling an OTO for 25.

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White is leading by 5 points. Red has no clock stoppages left. A jam just ended with 58s on the period clock. After 5s of lineup time officials call an OTO. Next jam Red gets lead after 10s, gets into the pack for a quick 2 points and calls it off with 31s left on the period clock. So one more jam is played. That jam ends 4-0 in favor of Red.
If the OTO had been called even 2s later, the winner of the game would have been different.

I don’t want to be part of this scenario. Not even as a member of the red team.

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The opposite scenario is also unfortunate. Folks standing around wasting time while the clock goes down from 58s to 33s before the timeout is called. Now Red gets the quick 2 points and calls it off, now with 6 seconds remaining on the clock. Red just had an epic jam, but can’t call a timeout, the period clock clicks 6…5…4…3…2…1 while the crowd chants “one more jam, one more jam,” and then the scoreboard to “unofficial score” with no fanfare. Neither option is good. But I prefer Speedy’s scenario.

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I’m struggling to understand why people would be standing around wasting time. The JT is rarely involved in fixing the situation, and one of their primary jobs during lineup time is watching for timeouts. Signal the OTO to the JT, they acknowledge it but don’t call it until 25. Everyone else can get on with fixing things, they don’t have to wait for 25 to do that. Maybe they even fixed it during that time and the OTO becomes unnecessary.

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“Standing around wasting time” – ostensibly there’s a good reason we need an OTO, but as you note, the JT is rarely involved in fixing it, so they are “standing around.” What are they doing, while standing around? Watching the period clock run, i.e., wasting it.

Some philosophizing. All opinions my own.

Why is there a period clock? To structure the length of games.
What is the purpose of period time? To play the actual sport.
Why is there lineup time? So skaters can safely get into position for a jam.
Why is it 30 seconds? It’s long enough for skaters to get on the track regardless of where the benches are, plus some buffer room if they forget, but it’s short enough to not be boring.
Why do we run the period clock during lineups? Because it is technically risky / potential for error with stops/starts, because of precedent from other sports, and because inconsistency of jam length means that “using” the buffer keeps wall-time more consistent.
Why don’t we run the period clock during team timeouts? Because we want that time to be spent playing derby. Because we want there to be as much “game” per game as there can be.
Why don’t we run the period clock during official timeouts? Same reason.

The purpose of timeouts is to take breaks. They all stop the period clock, and they do so for the sole reason of reserve that time for gameplay. So…we should do that.

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Not if they have understood how the clocks in derby work. Since they are unable to stop the period clock, it’s clear that they mustn’t call off that jam until they are ahead.
So the actual scenario would hopefully be that Red Jammer tries to gain a full lap on White Jammer. And either they manage to do that within two minutes and can then call the jam after turning the game around or they can’t and the game ends after a 2 minute epic battle.

If team timeouts are not meant to be an instrument for teams to affect the period clock, why do the officiating procedures include an explicit instruction that the period clock should be stopped exactly when the timeout is being signaled?

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My point is only that “is there another jam or not” for close games has potential for awkward scenarios in both ways.

Should we err on the side of more jams? Yes. In close games more time is fun and exciting, and in blowouts it is immaterial.

To the point about clock management, in my view that’s a strategic question on which there is no “correct move” or “ideal state” other than the one that wins you the game. And some jammers get their two points and see the other jammer coming and call it off out of habit, when they shouldn’t.

Officiating procedures clarify when the clock should stop simply because we need to know when the clock should stop so we can do it “at the right time.” Why was “the moment of signal” selected? I do not recall but I also cannot think of any other reasonable alternative which would not add inconsistency.

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What if OTOs called during Lineup Time didn’t stop the period clock until 30 seconds have elapsed since the last Jam? You call it as soon as you need to, but the Period Clock continues until the 30 seconds have elapsed. That way the Period Clock would be entirely unaffected by an OTO being called. We could still continue to pause it as normal for a TTO or an OR, thus maintaining the strategic element for the teams.

It feels like the winner of a game shouldn’t be changed just because we had to pause to repair the track.

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@Twixxi, your suggestion would require a rules change, which can certainly be proposed, but then it really, really does need skater support, which I’ve been trying to explain historically isn’t there.

It feels like the winner of a game shouldn’t be changed just because we had to pause to repair the track.

Another perspective is that… it didn’t. The winner of the game was determined by who played roller derby better, and that only happens by playing roller derby. That “extra” jam is the result of 30 minutes of decisions (both skaters’ and officials’), not just the latest one. Every stoppage, every time a Jammer calls off the jam, etc, etc, etc; it impacts the timing and number of total jams. But if another jam does change the outcome of the game, that game was still decided on the track, by skaters playing roller derby.

I tried to start out with a hope that we didn’t need to reopen the Pandora’s box of debate. Maybe that was foolish or even unfair of me. I wanted to recognize that the organization evolves and opinions change over time, and give skaters an opportunity to voice that their opinion had changed (or hadn’t).

There has pretty much never been a moment of doubt as to what the majority of officials believe(d) the practice should be. Skaters disagreed, and this is their sport. If you are waiting to call an OTO when you know you’re going to need one, you are acting in opposition to the skaters’ majority voice/wishes.

We (the officiating community) thought we had a “better” way of doing things. Skaters said, “Stop doing that.” All of these points have been made before. But at the end of the day, we need to abide by what our bosses want.

It’s difficult not to notice the balance of officials vs. skater voices participating in the discussion, and I do question how the results would change if we were to remove anyone’s vote who isn’t primarily an on-the-track competitor in the sport. A long, long existing issue with our discussions has been officials drowning out skater voices in matters of the rules and/or officiating practices. I really do encourage officials to stop arguing why you’re right and listen to what skaters want even if you don’t agree. We don’t all prioritize the same things. I also encourage skaters to voice their opinions here too.

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This IS in the Officiating section. I’d suspect that only Certified officials (or those with a deeper interest in officiating) are seeing this - I don’t know if/where the Skaters section is, but would it be worth cross-posting to there to get more engagement?

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I wanted to stop posting in this thread because I don’t think more words will convince anyone who isn’t convinced by what I already posted.

But I can’t let

stand without comment. You’re telling me that my voice as a Skater is worth less because I happen to have more games as an official than as a skater. That feels like a massive slap in the face.

And WFTDA has been moving from “by the skaters, for the skaters” to “by the community, for the community” for years in acknowledgement that people who don’t skate are also valuable members of the community. In that context

also feels like a big slide back.

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Charter team skater here that also officiates - I did vote in the poll.

I have generally seen implementation like Speedy initially described - try to fix it in between jams and only call the OTO if you cannot resolve in that time frame. I like this both as an official and as a skater because it means that most issues are resolved without the need for an OTO which sometimes end up being longer than needed because an OTO was called and cause more disruption to the game.

If the officials know they need more than 10-20 seconds to resolve the issue then I agree that they should call the OTO immediately and stop the period clock.

I feel like this can be appropriately addressed as guidance within the officiating guidelines and procedures and doesn’t require a rule change.

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I truly apologize that I didn’t do a better job communicating, and that’s the message you received. Members of our community that participate in multiple roles have unique perspectives that are valuable, appreciated, necessary, and wanted. But I do believe that we (as humans) have difficulty compartmentalizing our lenses, that our opinions are shaped by the totality of our perspective, and it’s difficult for someone who works in multiple roles to set aside opinions formed from one or another.

I think (or hope) our leadership would attest that I have been an active voice (and worker) in support of that progression for years both in our community’s eye and behind the scenes. But I think we still need to remember (and sometimes remind each other) that this org was founded with the idea that the people on the track self-determine their rules and by extension their officiating practices.

I’m going to add another side-note to avoid multiple posts. Yes, this is the “Officiating” board, not “Officials”. There is no Officials-side or Skater-site to the forum (like there used to be). There are areas reserved for League Representatives, but we also don’t distinguish between “skater reps” and “officials reps”. Reps are reps, and our current approach is to organize by topic, not participant identity.

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