In the third installment of our Stats series, we’re going to take a look at NSOs, their paperwork, and what this means for skaters.

NSOs (Non-Skating Officials) are one of the unsung heroes of game day. They are the ones stood with stopwatches, holding clipboards, and they keep the game running.

NSOs fill in a lot of paperwork during the game:

• Scorekeeping – The score, jammer related stats
• Penalty Tracking – Penalties per skater and the jam they were issued
• Lineup Tracking – Skaters that took part in each jam, their position and box entries/exits
• Penalty Box – Timings for penalties served by skaters
• Official Reviews – Information on what official reviews were for and outcome Expulsion – Information and comments on expulsions

After the game, the HNSO (Head Non-Skating Official) collects all the paperwork and uses this to fill in the Stats Book.

(Images used are from 2014 from a mixed scrim for illustration purposes only)

When all the paperwork is added to the Stats Book, it generates the Game Summary, which calculates a whole lot of lovely stats!

Let’s take a closer look!

The first section shows how many jams each skater played in, and what position they played.

The second section has all the stats related to jammers.

The third section shows all the points scored for and against their team each time that skater was on track, and broken down by position

The fourth section shows the VTAR (Versus Team Average Rating). This is how each member of the team performed against the average for the team.

And finally, the fifth section shows how many penalties each skater was issued. There are more details on the Penalty Summary sheet.

The Penalty Summary sheet displays all the penalties per skater for the game, and how many of each type.

We use these Stats Books to create the skater stats you see here on the website, but we consciously don’t include penalty stats.

Next time you see a Stats Book we hope you can understand what you’re looking at!