In Minnesota coaches are required to rate us on a scale from 7 (best) to 1 (worst) although there are no fines that I'm aware of. Our HS league is piloting a program starting this year with 3 referee grades (like USSF grades) where the average of these ratings impacts what grade you fall in and determine who is qualified to work section playoffs and the state tournament.
And coaches are determining this? I'm sorry but I have not met many coaches that could be labeled as fair and unbiased. Talk about getting a fair and honest assessment here in NJ they ask coaches for referee evaluations in the Garden State Soccer League it is based on a 100 point system. The team managers and not necessarily the coach submit the evaluation. The first game I did in GSSL involved a womens team with a entitled team manager. It was not a surprise when I receive an evaluation of between 65 and 70. A week later the opposing team submitted their evaluation and my score went from that lower score to around 85. Therefore you're going to have a lot of valuations based on absolutely made of crap and bias on the part of these individuals. This is not an accurate assessment or the right system to implement for referee evaluation.
There used to be a USSF policy that only qualified assesors may do ANY type of evaluative process on referees to determine ANYTHING for any league associated with USSF. I used to referee in NJ years ago, and a couple of the leagues started doing this. I remember that I never gave my name to the person who was supposed to evaluate me, since at the time I was also an assesor as well as a referee. One coach who evaluated me complained during the game that I called a ball "out" while it was in the air. I just smiled and told him to put all his complaints in his evaluation and they would be ignored.
Add that to another reason why you shouldn't comment on things you have no knowledge of. Expaining a red card is MANDATORY in NFHS.
NFHS rules require the referee to NOTIFY both coaches, the scorer and other official(s) of the nature of the misconduct. No need for this to be a conversation.
Very simple. "Five, blue, caution, unsporting behavior." Then go restart the game. If you can't handle that interaction with the coaches, you probably shouldn't be doing high school games.
As a coach, I really wouldn't want this responsibility. Not only am I not a ref, so I don't know the fine points on how refs should be evaluated, but I'm coaching my players, not paying attention to how well the ref is doing his/her job. For example, if I had to rate the CR on my match yesterday, the only specific incident I can recall was a PK call against my team that I thought was a lousy call. (Had the situation been identical but the teams been reversed, I still would have thought it was a lousy call. There was simply no reason for a foul to be called.) Whether or not it was a lousy call, it's not good that my evaluation of him would be based on only 1 of the many decisions he made during the match.
The other problem with coach/team ratings is that less than 10% of the teams will actually rate the officials. Our NISOA chapter used to have us give out postcards to both coaches before the game so they could rate us. At the end of the season, we were given the postcards that had been received. Fairly few cards ever came back, certainly not enough to show a pattern, and 75% of them were negative, usually over one decision or one interaction with the referee. So you looked better if coaches didn't respond, which kind of gave us an incentive to forget to give out the cards. On the other hand, our adult women's league managers are required by the league to rate the referee on each game. Most people are rated as average. (I guess that's why it's called an average!) They have had a few referees, however, that the league board has requested that the assignor not use any more. None of the guys they put on their blacklist were a surprise to me. Usually a mix of "I don't really care" behavior by the referee with a seasoning of truly bizzare stuff. Like the referee that, during the run of play, lay down on the field and asked a player to walk on his back. Twice in the same game.
Shout out to Sherman Hemsley, RIP Oddly enough, I couldn't find a YouTube clip. Shocking! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_The_Jeffersons_supporting_characters#Harry_Bentley
Well then, I guess I shouldn't be working games at such a complex and advanced level as high school because when I told the coach his keeper was being sent off for a dogso, he told me there was no such rule....so either I don't know what the hell I'm talking about or I did a piss poor job of explaining it...must be the Swahili tongue I speak in.
Me, "Coach, send off for Serious Foul Play...foul...denying the opponent an opportunity to score." Coach, "No such thing." Me: Tweeeeeeeet...for DFK or PK.
That's basically what happened.....except when I first went over I wasn't sure if he was complaining that a foul didn't occur or that it wasn't a send off. I first confirmed that he thought it wasa foul, and then when he told me he had never heard of a dogso I told him we were restarting with a pk and the send off decision stands. The whole conversation couldn't have takenm more than 10 seconds, max. I think I've been in enough high level games to know how to deal with a hs coach. What astounded me was that he didn't know what a dogso was.
It might help if you read what I wrote a little more carefully....I DIDN'T stick around.....I had to first confirm what his quaery was. When he told me he had never heard of a dogso, I left. It wasn't that big of an issue. Some of the kids on the field were laughing at him. It was actually somewhat amusing. But of course somebody else is going to chime in and give me more pointers on man/game management, I'm sure.
aek chicago, it'd probably help if you re-read the last dozen posts or so and--hopefully--realized that every single statement found in this thread isn't necessarily directed at you and this particular incident. In fact, I don't think any of them are (excluding your interaction with IllinoisRef, which I've edited out as unnecessary personal attacks) since post #26, which happened on Thursday. Barring that realization, if you don't want to have issues tangentially related to an incident you encountered discussed, might I suggest you not start a public thread about it?
I guess that's what I'm getting at, Benji. Should I draft such a letter and what's the potential fallout/drawback to doing so. Its one thing to not agree with a call, quite another to vehemently dispute a rule/law you have no knowledge of.
I agree. In some other cases I would have "eaten" the red card. In this case though, given the "culture" surrounding hs play in the area, I decided to go plastic. You see, my ar1 who was 30 yards behind the play (it was on his half of the field) and who should have probably whistled the scorer offside is a former state administrator know-it-all-but never reffed a high level match in his life type who couldn't wait until the match ended to tell everyone (I mean everyone) he wouldn't have pulled red there. I'm sure if I kept the card in the pocket he would have run around telling people I failed to recognize a dogso. THIS is what I was really contemplating when I was deciding on whether or not to go plastic. The game ended at 2 pm. By 7 pm, at least four other referees had heard about the red card. Absurd.
I think the odds of such a letter ending well for you are slim. Unfortunately, one of the consequences of being a referee is suffering abuse in silence from people who know not of which they speak.
Except that what the coach thought wasn't a consideration at all. In fact, I had no way of knowing he didn't know what a dogso was before I gave red. My consideration was whether I should eat the card given the score and the culture of hs play in the area. Last I checked, I was a REAL referee...or at least I thought I was. In that same state, I've called a dogso pk with one minute to go in a tied match involving the 2011 state champ and another state ranked opponent, AGAINST the home team in front of a four digit crowd. That kind of stuff doesn't sway me in the least bit. Especially at the high school level. And nobody said a word to me.
I agree wholehearetedly. In fact, this was the very topic of discussion in a seminar I attended with Paul Tamberino as guest speaker...practical v technical refereeing. The great ones are those that can navigate these gray areas and come up with the best possible solution(s). Its not an exact science, and even the best can sometimes make mistakes, but its what separates the men from the boys, IMO.
I think what eastshire was getting at is that he's not ignoring the laws...simply viewing them in a different light according to circumstances. Remember, the second prong of giving a card...does the game need it? People are free to referee as they see fit, but based on my experience...and interaction with some higher ups in the USSF food chain, the "technical" referees are the ones who fail to reach any significant level.
Wow. That sounds like a thoroughly unpleasant place to work. My NFHS experiences have been very different. If anything, I enjoy the camaraderie of HS games more than most.
I sometimes think of refereeing as composed of a little bit of black, a little bit of white, and a whole lot of grey. Much of that grey, however, is als dark grey or light grey. Dark grey should usually be treated as black, and light grey should usually be treated as white -- the art of refereeing is knowing when to depart from those "usually"s. (And the science feeds the art: knowing that one is bending the Laws is important in judging those rare cases when dark grey is treated as white.)