youth soccer refs: your jerseys

The OP question is now a BS annual. But still worth asking.
Past years have revealed significant regional differences.
Around here, Green would be the second choice. And, you could easily skip Blue and Black entirely.

 

Are you going to get to that level before your first jerseys wear out? Or your daughter leaves chapstick or a pen in her pocket, and your shirt is ruined in the wash?

 

True, true. I'm sure mine will wear out and by then there could possibly be change in style or manufacturer. I bought mine from OSI because that was the recommendation from my local assignor.

 

And that is the key. While refs on the web will have their own opinions, the only ones that are going to matter to new refs are the local opinions of those who assess and assign games -- even if those locals are "wrong."

 

There is no official order as you stated but most associations will recommend the order (at least around here) so those starting will have alternates and those alternates will be the same.

I think a lot of this is moot in that those refereeing at the levels it may matter will have all 10. Not to disparage anyone or worse any level of play, it's just a fact higher levels of play get higher levels of officials.

 

Has anybody got a picture of all their kits? (I'll do a picture of mine when i'm home)
Just interested in the style and look of them all, might help me make sense of the OSI threads

 

No pics handy, but here's a link:
http://www.officialsports.com/USSF-...archPage=1&searchRank=salesrank&searchSize=12

 

Random question: Does OSI do any sort of Black Friday/Cyber Monday sale? I know they do a Holiday sale but is that it?

 

Because green is the second least used color by teams out of the five referee colors.

I did a little experiment this year....I brought only my yellow and green jerseys in my ref bag to matches.

I've done somewhere between 120-150 matches this year......and not ONCE did I use any jersey other than yellow or green.

Not once.

Youth state leagues, regional leagues, academy games, US Club regionals/nationals, mens amateur, etc...

Not once did I have a problem.

IMO, red and blue are basically useless referee colors.

Nor is there any need for more than three jersey colors.

 

OTOH, I cover the same territory as aek chicago but at a lower level. Of the top 15 clubs I work, two have green primary shirts and one has yellow. I think blue is the color I see the least.

The ARs that normally work for the yellow team don't even have yellow shirts.

 

I have the feeling that referees wear the colors based on what the teams / leagues they work most. In my home league, the players wear either yellow or purple jerseys, period. Wearing a yellow referee jersey is a bad plan, we wear red as our base color, 99.9% of the time. When we work the surrounding region, we wear our reds and then the yellows.

 

I disagree, slightly, with this. I have used all 10 jerseys this year (SS and LS) mainly because I personally hate wearing yellow. I will also try and make sure the referee team does not match the teams or the GKs. This does lead to "needing" five jerseys occasionally.

I could see the US operating with a three jersey system if you got two "main" colors and an alternate. I would like to see green and black as the mains with like a purple or white as the alternate. I think that would cover just about every possible team combination pretty easily.

 

I personally don't like the yellow either, but I dislike carrying all five colors in my bag even more. Based on my experience, 99 percent of the time you can get away with carrying just yellow or green.

As far as the keepers are concerned, I couldn't care less about what they're wearing. MUCH easier to have one gk change than to have 11 players or three referees do so.

 

In my area one of the 2 primary soccer leagues has green as their primary color so needless to say, green is almost never used (even though it is my favorite color). I believe that the alternate color is dependent on the area you work in. Ask your local referees and assignors to select the best second alternate for yourself.

 

How does an entire league have a primary color? Do all the teams wear green? I've never heard of such a thing. Is this at the youth level?

I just did the US Club and EPNL regionals and nationals, probably 20 games or so, both fairly decent tournaments with teams from all over the country, and I did not run into a single problem with green or yellow. Nor have I ever run into a problem with green or yellow in any of the mens amateur leagues I ref. I have run into ONE youth team with yellow (Columbus Crew) and only two mens amateur teams with green. I can't ever recall a game though when both colors were being used by the respective teams.

 

ARs for low level youth are generally teenagers who only work for for their hometown club. So an AR living in the yellow club's city I referenced above would never get a chance to use a yellow shirt, so they don't buy one.

When the yellow club was recently visiting another city, my youth ARs only had yellow, so the players had to change. The next field over, the refs and an older team from the yellow club were both wearing yellow. No one seemed to care. I bet the yellow club rarely runs into a ref who cares that the refs and team match.

 

Yes it is a SLSG Soccer Club league. It is the larger single soccer club in St. Louis, large enough that they separated from the SLYSA league and started their own a few years ago. Their primary color is Green, which the home team wears, while the away team wears white. Pretty much 95% of these games are green vs. white.

 

Oh, ok.......I know SLSG well. Reffed their academy sides and sent off two of their players in the U14 Boys Final at the US Club Nationals!

 

I don't like yellow either, I was known as an 'Anything But Yellow' ref back in Ohio. That partially comes from having an ill-fitting yellow and additionally living close to the Crew and another couple of large clubs that wear yellow as their second.

The one issue that I have with black as a main color is that it's hot during the summer and during the early spring/late fall when the parents all have dark winter jackets on I find it next to impossible to find AR2 from the center.

 

It's not real good under the lights either. For that matter, neither is red or blue. (For which reason, I hope GHSA lets us use green this year...)

 

I agree with you on black being hard to see at times. The US could use the trifecta they used in the UCL a couple of years ago. Purple, Orange, and white. We would never have a conflict there...

 

The local clubs here are red and yellow, black and white, blue and white. Another club they often play is too close to our green (more flourescent but too close). On any given game you are right, but for the season, we need 5.

 

What exactly are "local" clubs? You mean like geographically? Or are you assigned only to a few clubs? If I had to keep track of all the clubs I referee I would lose my mind......LOL! Interesting though, I'm not sure I've heard such a designation around my parts.

 

I told the parents at one game during a tournament that the color that each referee crew wore showed how much experience and how good they were. It was like a secret code used only by referees. The lighter the color, the less experienced the referees, so that you want the crew that wears black, they are usually the best, and you don't want green because that was the youngest group, newbies. Well 10 games later on Sunday, I am running a line with two teams I never saw before and I happened to be wearing black. I could hear the parents talking about they finally got a good referee crew because we were in black. The next game I am on a game with some very experienced referees who decided to wear green. Wow, from the first tip off (that kind of looked like it might of gone backwards) the parents were all over us, never mind we had no cards and no problems with the players who thought their parents went nuts for no good reason. I told one of the players, kid if you ever decide to be a referee, never wear green.