Register online at azrefereeseminars.com

SEATS ARE LIMITED; REGISTRATION IS FIRST COME/FIRST SERVE BASIS

Enrolling in a seminar will be a 2-step process.  Step 1 is registering with USA Hockey as an on-ice official for the 2010-11 season. (When you register as an on-ice official you will be charged a $20 Education and Training fee in addition to the registration fee.  This fee is taking the place of the seminar fee that had been charged separately in the past. Step 2 is to enroll in a seminar through the USA Hockey seminar registration site .You will need to be registered with USA Hockey as an on-ice official in order to attend a seminar, no exceptions! Specific details on the seminars will be emailed to those enrolled 2-3 weeks before the seminar.

For those of you who will be attending the Level 4 seminar this year, the date has not yet been set (awaiting ice confirmation) but it will be sometime in mid-late September.  Once I have the information I will make it available on the azrefereeseminars.com website.

2010 PLAYER DEVELOPMENT CAMP

As part of our AAHA Player Development Camp each year we offer a Referee Power Skating Clinic at no charge to all USA Hockey Registered Officials.

The Referee Power Skating Clinic is being held this year at the Alltel Ice Den on Thursday, April 1 at 8:40 PM. There is no registration necessary.  Just show up with your skates.

This camp will be under the leadership of Mark Ciaccio who is the Power Skating Coach of the Phoenix Coyotes.

For further information please contact

Mark Ciaccio at mcpwrskate@cox.net (480-329-8737) or

Geoff Pashkowski at dplusarch@cox.net (602-376-6722) or

Mary Stewart at mshockeymail@aol.com (602-550-3108) or

…

It is with great sadness that we inform you that  today (7/5/10) Andrew finally decided that it was time to let go. At around 2:30 Andrew passed away. Once we have decided on services we will let everyone know.

Andrew has been a USA Hockey certified official and CIHRA member dating back to the 2005-2006 season.

Andrew was a longtime local, born and raised in the Vail valley.  He lived in Edwards with his mom Joni, dad Mike, and brother Brian and is a sophomore at Battle Mountain High School.  He was an avid outdoorsman and especially enjoyed hunting and fishing with family and friends.

For the past two plus years, Andrew has been battling a rare form of cancer at Children’s Hospital in Denver.    Throughout the duration of Andrew’s illness, he has maintained his officiating certifications and registrations with USA Hockey and CIHRA.  And, as opportunities have permitted, he has officiated a game here and there.  He has been proud to be a part of the hockey community and, notably, our CIHRA officiating family.

Unfortunately, Andrew’s condition had worsened in recent months and doctors no longer consider treatment an option.  Bluntly, Andrew was given a very limited amount of time.

Since their last update (6/30/10) , Andrew had many ups and downs. He was able to fish most of the day last Friday and then tried to take Grandpa Jim out in his boat on Saturday morning, but they came in after about an hour and Andrew was weak and short of breath. We put him on oxygen right away and then later in the day he started having more difficulties breathing so we decided it was time to get Brian and some other family members to come here to our campsite at the lake. Mid-afternoon on Sunday, Andrew again had a more severe breathing episode and we thought we were losing him. He was fairly incoherent and breathing very oddly. He was sitting up with his eyes closed and then all of a sudden he opened his eyes and said to us “He isn’t ready for me yet”. We said “who isn’t ready for you yet?” and he said “I talked to God and he told me that he wasn’t ready for me yet”. Later that afternoon, Andrew got out of bed, sat in a camp chair next to the lake, got his fishing pole out and caught several fish!! We think it was pretty obvious that God wants him to catch more fish before he goes to heaven!

Information posted on 7/5/10 from their CarePages site…

On Thursday afternoon, Andrew said he was ready “for real food” as he had not eaten since Sunday morning and he was ready to go back to Grandma and Grandpa’s house in Arnold, NE (2 hours from Merritt Reservoir). We packed up and moved Andrew, his boat, and the camper with the enormous help of our “pit crew” (our family that was still there and Rick Mueller, Mackenzie Mueller, Aly Pelchat, and Brett Lich and Woody Lich who had driven to the lake on Thursday morning to see Andrew).

We had several bad scares over the weekend and Andrew was having some stomach pain, but we got the pain under control with medication. Every time after one of these scares, Andrew would rebound and start walking around or go outside like nothing had happened. Andrew slept pretty well on Sunday night until 4:30am when he had some mild stomach pain. Today, he stopped breathing at about 10:30am and we thought he had died, but after a minute or so he started breathing again. After a little while, he got up to go to the bathroom and also went outside. There was a little humor in that Andrew had just almost died and here he was up and about and we looked at each other and chuckled as if to say “Look at our son never giving up.” At 12:30pm, he stopped breathing again for several minutes and again we thought had died, but he started breathing again. He was unconscious from then until he took his last breath around 2:30pm.

Services will be as follows:
- a wake service (including informal story telling about Andrew) on Friday, July 9 at 7pm at St. Agnes Catholic Church in Arnold, NE
- a funeral Mass on Saturday, July 10 at 10am at St. Agnes Catholic Church,
- graveside services and burial at the Arnold Cemetery immediately following the Mass
- a luncheon following the graveside services at the Arnold Community Center.

A memorial service will also be held in the Vail Valley in the very near future and the details have yet to be determined.

In lieu of flowers, memorials are suggested to any FirstBank of Colorado location to the Andrew Claymon Memorial Fund. These funds will be distributed to various organizations that Andrew was involved with (Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation, Ducks Unlimited, Children’s Hospital in Denver, etc.).

For anyone who is coming from out of town to Arnold for the services and who needs a place to stay, there are 2 hotels in Arnold, a few hotels in Broken Bow, NE (30 minutes away), a bunch of hotels in North Platte, NE (50 minutes away).

It is comforting to us tonight to know that Andrew will no longer have any pain or suffering, but we sure wish he was still here so we could take care of him.

The purpose of the ACHA is to support quality, unity and regulation of intercollegiate hockey programs nationwide. In order to do this, the ACHA has developed organization By-Laws and a Policies and Procedures Manual to provide the policy foundation for the organization as it works to fulfill its purpose. These documents are reviewed yearly at the ACHA’s annual meeting.

The ACHA’s policies cover team and player eligibility, rules of play, ranking procedures, national tournament procedures, and other administrative issues.

If you are a Level 3 or 4 USA Hockey Official and are interested in officiating at the ACHA level.Then you should send a brief officiating resume to:

Leave your comment (we review all comments posted to the site)  by clicking the red Leave a Comment tag above.

A special thank you to:

Colin Besch   AZIOA Member
Shawn Dalton  AZIOA Member
Adam Dalton   AZIOA member
Brett Dalton   AZIOA member
Armand DeForest   AZIOA member
Josh Geiwitz     AZIOA member
Will Argeros  AZIOA member

Leave your comment (we review all comments posted to the site)  by clicking the red Leave a Comment tag above.

Colin Besch with NHL linesman Shane Heyer

As a member of the Arizona Independent Officials organization,

you have the opportunity to attend a focused prep session

to help you pass your open book exam and learn

more about the USA Hockey rulebook.

The sessions will cover:

• Rule changes for the 2009-2010 season
• Answer and discuss the open book exam questions together

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Sessions are scheduled for 6pm – 9pm on the following dates:

September 3^rd September 9^th

September 16^th September 17^th

September 30^th October 1^st

^{Note: Convenient session locations will be arranged based on responses received}

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To make your reservation now

Send an email to:

Scott Leeseberg (scott@azioa.com)

Include in the email:

Name, Address, Phone, Session choices, and

USA Hockey official level for which you are preparing