His determination to be a respected on-ice official was just one of the reasons that USA Hockey named Cornock the 2024 recipient of the Ben Allison Award, which honors an official in the Advanced Officiating Development Program who best represents Allison’s traits.
Allison was a dedicated on-ice official who was struck and killed by a car in January 2015 on the Illinois State University campus at the age of 20.
Cornock spent most of the previous two seasons as a referee in the NAHL South Division, but he got a late-season promotion to the USHL, the top Junior A league in the country.
He made a quick impression as a quality official and earned the right to work a playoff game, the opener of the first-round matchup between the Lincoln Stars and Waterloo Black Hawks. His reaction when he found out via email he received a playoff assignment: “Jaw-dropping.”
“I looked at it and my name was right there in the middle and I had to read it like four times, going. ‘There’s got to be a typo here. Something’s wrong’” said Cornock. “I’m not full time in this league and I got called up for 10 games in total. This doesn’t seem right. How does a guy that does 10 games get to come up and work a playoff game? It was just kind of like a surreal, out-of-body experience, getting the information and then doing the game.”
Cornock will be full time in the USHL this coming season. Much like his late stint in the USHL and playoff selection, Cornock didn’t see the Ben Allison Award coming.
“It was another kind of shock to me,” Cornock said. “It’s a great award to win, but I feel like it’s one of those awards that you don’t go out and you’re pursuing it. It just kind of happens. So the fact that it just happened to me, I never expected to be nominated, let alone win it. Seeing the nominations come out, I was overjoyed and excited and shocked that I was nominated.”
***
If Ben Allison were still alive, his mother said he would scoff at the fact there was an award named after him.
“He would laugh his ass off,” Melissa Allison said.
Why?
“[He would have] no patience for any of this,” Allison said. “He was not about any kind of recognition. He just did the work. And being a hockey referee meant so much to him.”
Allison’s voice still trembles with plenty of emotion when talking about her son. To honor him, Melissa and husband Tim have traveled to every NHL, MLB, NBA and NFL venue in the U.S. and Canada, spreading some of Ben’s ashes at each one.
Well, almost every venue.
“We wanted to save Chicago for last so his friends could come with us,” Allison said.
Allison also does one other thing. Each year when USA Hockey reveals the winner of the Ben Allison Award, she sends a text message to the winner.
“It’s very bittersweet,” Allison said. “I wish they never had to create this award. But the fact that Ben meant enough to them … the emails that Scott [Zelkin, director of USA Hockey’s Advanced Officiating Development Program] sends out says, ‘Ben wasn’t the best referee, but he worked hard every single game no matter what level he was refereeing. Ben was the example that we hope all AODP officials strive to become.’
“He was always trying to better himself to serve the game of ice hockey.”
When Allison had summoned the strength to sell some of Ben’s equipment, she knew he had a wonderful pair of skates that someone could surely use. When she took a good look at them, Ben had written “110%” and “Skate every game like it’s your last” on them.
That brought another wave of emotion, and she decided she couldn’t part with Ben’s skates.
***
Cornock certainly fits the mold of Ben Allison. He was a part-time participant in the Advanced Officiating Development Program while attending Northern Michigan, but Cornock went full time once he figured that hockey officiating should be a bigger part of his life.
“It honestly teaches you a lot of things,” Cornock said of USA Hockey’s Advanced Officiating Development Program. “How to communicate in many different situations, whether it’s coaches and bosses and teammates and friends and stuff like that. You run into a lot of different personalities and some things work with some people, some don’t. It’s always, always kind of a learning curve there, but you get to definitely experience multiple ways to handle situations, and they can apply in many different ways, even outside of a hockey rink.”
That improved communication has been one of the biggest keys to Cornock’s success and movement up the ranks, especially when dealing with emotional coaches in crucial situations.
“I’m not a big confrontation kind of person,” Cornock said, “which is really funny for being a referee when you run into confrontation left and right. Really learning how to handle confrontation or accepting when you have to go into a confrontation and then just problem-solving through it, trying to figure out how to make a coach who is at 100 go from there to even 50% or 40% in a matter of like 10 seconds is a puzzle, and it’s an awesome challenge to try to do.”
Cornock probably would have been happy to finish out last season in the NAHL South and perhaps be in the conversation to jump up to the USHL this coming season.
That’s his unassuming nature. His performance, though, had others thinking much more of him.
“It was definitely an exciting year last year,” Cornock said. “The goals I had set kind of got blown out of the water when I got to do some USHL games and then getting the playoff on top of it was something I would not expect, only doing 10 games in a league for the season and then you get a playoff game was honestly — I don’t think starstruck is the right word — but it just shocked me. It was not something I had in the cards and it just popped up — and I was like, ‘Holy smokes!’”
The Allisons made a trip out to USA Hockey headquarters in Colorado Springs, Colorado, to see the plaque bearing their son’s name and the list of winners of the award. Cornock is hoping to get an opportunity to do the same. He would like to see where his name is engraved with the others who came before him. Maybe, Cornock said, he would be able to meet the Allisons there so he could learn more about Ben.
“It’s pretty special to me,” Cornock said. “It’s a hard thing to go through and then there’s an award named after your son, which is super special. … It’s heartwarming that they’re still so involved. To know that (Allison) still wants to reach out and talk to whoever is awarded that award is pretty special.”
Story from Red Line Editorial, Inc.
