Saskatchewan ref more than earned his stripes
Ray Baumann has spent half a century criss-crossing Saskatchewan highways in the dead of winter.
The well-travelled referee and linesman has one final game on his calendar. That game happens Sunday in Cudworth, a small community located about 85 kilometres northeast of Saskatoon.
Baumann will officiate an exhibition game between Sweden’s national women’s hockey team — which is playing at the upcoming Four Nations Cup in Saskatoon — and a local midget boys squad.
Organizers asked if he wanted to wear the zebra stripes one more time for old times’ sake. Sure, he said. The retirement he thought had begun after last season can wait for one more game.
“The people respect me enough to ask me to do it,” Baumann said quietly, and you know it means a lot to him.
He thought he was finished at the end of last season, when he worked a midget championship game. His goal every year was to officiate a game at season’s end, when they presented a trophy or a plaque. That honour was his once again. From there, the whistle was tucked away and the jersey hung up.
Until Sunday, that is.
This on-ice mingling of elite Swedish hockey players and a team of prairie boys who love the game is a nice way to go out, he said. The game also brings his officiating story full circle.
Baumann has been at it since the age of 14, when they needed an official one day in Cudworth. He skated onto the ice, whistling and puck-dropping for boys he went to school with. There was 50 years of it still to come, though he had no idea at the time.
“Where’s your skates? Here’s your sweater. Here’s your whistle. Try it!” he said in recalling that first foray.
“In the days when I started, you didn’t have to be a registered official. Lots of leagues weren’t registered then, so as long as you put a pair of skates on and a whistle and a sweater, you could be an official.”
After getting his start in the 1960s, he worked his way through the rough-and-tumble 1970s and hit his stride in the 1980s and 1990s. The Saskatchewan Junior Hockey League was the highest level he worked at, but he called them all: different ages, different towns from kids to the senior leagues.
His odometer jumped from winter to winter, sometimes dramatically. He never hit the ditch en route to a game and stormy nights never stopped him from his appointed rounds. He does remember a few days where he had no idea how he was going to get there only to have the game cancelled.
“Sometimes it was, ‘OK, why am I leaving ?’ Especially in the days before cellphones,” Baumann said. “The difference then was there was more population around (in the rural areas), so if you got stranded you could see some lights or you could see another yard.”
Once he got to the rink, they’d play the good old hockey game, throwing the occasional barb his way. He recalled one contest in the 1980s when an angry coach threw a water bottle at him.
“Fifteen, 20 years ago, your skin had to be a lot thicker than it does today,” he said. “There’s a lot more respect coming from the players and the coaches in the last 20 years than there was prior to that.
“The hockey community itself went to the coaches and players and said we’re a needed part of hockey. Let’s have a hockey game and not have referees, see how that works, those types of comments. But some days you need thicker skin than others.”
Baumann once kept track of how many games he worked, but he stopped doing that a long time ago. There were a few years when he scaled back his officiating duties, he said, and others when it ramped right back up. His estimate: 1,250 to 1,500.
He worked with a variety of upand-coming officials who ended up calling NHL games, but that was never his dream. He liked where he was.
After Sunday’s game, he’ll still spend time around the rink, he said, offering advice to other officials, spreading his accumulated wisdom the best he can. He’s also the president of the senior Fort Carlton Hockey League, so the game won’t be far away.
“It was a good experience,” Baumann said. “If it wasn’t, I wouldn’t have continued. The friends you’ve made, the acquaintances ...
“At different times you’ll see somebody and we’ve met through hockey, that’s the only relationship we have. Even if it wasn’t cordial on the ice at times, now we can talk. We did this, we met here. Some guys say, ‘I’m still mad at you for the penalty you gave me.’ But there’s a smile at the end.”