Local ref going to Olympics

Hamiltonian Jesse Wilmot is going to be as close as one can get to the action at the Olympic men’s hockey tournament in Sochi. He won’t be playing, but he’ll be skating alongside the world’s best players. The 29-year old Sherwood Secondary grad will be in Sochi as an on ice official.

We rarely notice the officials at a hockey game, but Hamiltonians might want to pay attention to this year’s Olympics. Local linesman Jesse Wilmot officiated this gold medal game at last year’s World Championship in Sweden. And three weeks from now, he’ll be off to Sochi.

Jesse says: “They had a camp in Switzerland in August of 5 days. Physical testing, rule knowledge; a lot of stuff crammed into 5 days.”

He started refereeing house league teams when he was 16, to make a little extra cash, and he’s been overseeing OHL, East Coast and American Hockey League games for the past 8 years. Wilmot is one of eight linesmen chosen from an international pool, who will work with eight NHL linesmen during the winter games. And just like the athletes themselves, how He performs in the round-robin will determine if he moves-on to officiate in the playoffs.

Jesse says: “I’m assuming there will be 2 supervisors per game, every game is documented and where you fall in the lineup is based on your own work I guess.”

Even while working full-time at Arcelor-Mittal, Wilmot still finds time to officiate as many as five games a week, hoping that one day he be called-up to the NHL.

Jesse says: “Right now, with working full time and doing this, it’s still a hobby. Even though it’s full-time hours of a job, it’s still more of a hobby than a job to me, because you still have fun doing it, right.”