Emily Goernert has been playing hockey for as long as she can remember, and has been officiating for eight years as well. This year, Goernert received the Most Improved Official Award in the Brandon region at the Hockey Manitoba Awards Luncheon last week.

Being the only female official in Brandon for a long time, Goernert became more passionate at becoming great at what she was doing to help blaze a trail for upcoming females who want to get involved.
“Being the only female official for a long time was pretty difficult,” said Goernert.
“But I’ve been sitting on the Brandon Referee Development Committee and trying to mentor the younger girls getting involved while fine-tuning my own skills. Getting this award really inspires me to keep getting better and helping other girls get better with me.”

At 21-years-old, Goernert played competitive hockey up until last season when she started focus fully on officiating.
“I try to ref about four or five games a weekend,” she said.
“I do a lot of work with the Westman Wildcats, which requires a lot of travel sometimes, and I do as many tournaments as I can manage.”

While Goernert admits Brandon doesn’t have a very strong female hockey scene, she has confidence in the steps being made over the past few years to improve it.
“Unfortunately we don’t have the skill level in our plays at this time to be as competitive as we would like in Brandon,” she said.
“But Hockey Manitoba and Brandon hockey have been working hard to make girls hockey and female officiating stronger, and we are getting a lot of support.”

Goernert prefers to work in the female divisions, but does a lot of AAA and Bantam games for the men as well, even though her gender sometimes brings on hostile behaviour.
“Some coaches in male hockey try to push me around a bit more, but I’ve always had a tough personality,” said Goernert.
“I don’t break. I stay tough and don’t let my emotions show. Just because it is a male-dominated position doesn’t mean I can’t do just as well, if not better.”

Emily hopes to start officiating at the CIS level, working as a referee at U of M Bisons games, but in the mean time she is still had at work perfecting her skills and passing them on to younger referees trying to get into the game.