I hear "OK Boomer" and I think Oklahoma Sooners. I was able to google ok boomer, and realized it's a knock on a generation younger than me!
This one was maybe eight inches to the right of ending up in the Bad Story thread. Bad part: Maybe the most egregious advantage miss of my unillustrious career. But all's well that ends well. U12 academy boys. Interesting chat with the visiting coaches before the match. "So, U12 ... 30 minute halves and headers are OK, yeah? Anything else I should know?" "Well, actually ..." Aw jeez, here we go. "We like to do the sneak two-man short corner kick." "OK." "And if we get a PK, we might try having the striker roll it forward and another player run in to put it in." "Um, OK." Can't wait to see that. "And if you get so much as a peep out of any our players or any of our parents, let us know and we'll take care of it." "Bunch of hooligans, huh? OK, I'll be on my guard." "Well, we just took this team over from some other coaches. They were a bunch of whining bickering complainers, and we're trying to fix that." "Good for you. Anything else?" "Yeah. The home team is their best team, and we're not all that good. In fact we've only won one game. Home coach said they'll go easy on us if it comes to that." "Good to know, thanks." Sure enough, blue visitors are completely outclassed by the home team, but they keep their heads up and play hard, and they manage to score one in the first half and another in the second. They were so tickled by each goal you'd have thought they'd come from behind to tie it up, but at full time they're down 9-2. In the minute of stoppage they're attacking and their guy gets hacked down just outside the 18. I blow for the foul and turn to see the ball squirt in to another blue player who's through and one on one with the keeper and shooting and I just have time to think "Oh sh__!" before the ball hits the outside of the post and goes out of play. I turn around to see the blue coach laughing. I say "Oh man, I can't tell you how glad I am that ball didn't go in. That would have been all on me." He says "Yeah I think the soccer gods just smiled on you." They were certainly laughing. But the best part is blue takes their free kick and bends a beauty into the far top corner of the net. Holy smoke, you would have thought they'd won the World Cup. I had to break up a dogpile to get to the kickoff and blow for time. Coach comes over, still laughing, to shake my hand and says "Ball don't lie, eh ref?" "Not today coach. Not today." Both teams went home happy, both teams' coaches went home happy, both teams' parents went home happy. And the ref went home happy.
I did the opposite this week in a HS playoff game, which at the time is 1-0 Blue. White attempts to cross the ball inside the PA, close to the post; Blue puts up her hand and knocks the ball down. Whistle moves to mouth; ball lands at Blue's feet and she kicks it. Whistle blows (by itself...); ball bounces off of White player, some scrum (maybe a full two second's worth), and White puts the ball in the net. Aggggghhhh why didn't I wait. White's celebrating, I tell them no, I blew the whistle, and fortunately they're pretty understanding, and thank heavens they bury the PK (and then go on to win 2-1). My crew was trying to tell me I was right to blow the whistle, but I wasn't. No other dumb mistakes this week, though there is still time. (No more games, but still time.)
I don't know about the rest of you. I'm 75, and just did 4 games this weekend. Yesterday, I did another child of a former player. I'm never surprised to meet the children of the players I coached 30 or 40 years ago.
This is going to be a long post, but I find it cathartic writing about certain situations like this. It all started when I forgot to set my clocks back Sunday morning. When I go out of town, I try to make it so I arrive at least an hour early to budget for traffic. Especially in Atlanta. When I crossed the Chattahoochee River, I noticed my phone was an hour behind the clock in my car. "Did I forget to set the clocks back at home?" Yes, yes I did. Looks like I am going to get to the fields around 9:00 for an 11:00 game. I'm sitting at the last red light before the fields around 9:00 when I hear the email notification. It is an urgent plea from the assignor on 9:00 positions unfilled. I emailed him back stating I am five minutes away. I get to the fields and see field 1 has three referees, but field 2 is missing the AR2. I head that way. Someone in a club jacket said, "We need you on field 6." I said, "Field 2 is missing an AR." He said, "Field 6 is uncovered." All six fields are full-size fields. I had centered only one full-size field before, a low-level friendly where the skill level was barely above rec. And at 350+ lbs., I don't have the speed to keep up with even that. And I can't just use the center circle. Apparently it isn't in my nature. I tried once and still found myself well beyond that boundary. He drives me to field 6 in a Gator and I see two club linesmen and a club referee. He's wearing jeans, sneakers, and a yellow pinnie. As I disembark the Gator, the visiting coach yells to the club referee, "Use your whistle!" The club referee yells back "I don't have a whistle." I can fix that. I retrieve a whistle from my bag and, at a stoppage, walk on the field and hand it to him. I then notice these male players were pretty big. I go back to my bag, put on a jersey, badge, and pocket the necessities. The ball goes out of play near me, and the club referee asks "Are you ready?" My mouth said yes but my brain yelled "Hell no!" I asked the guy how far in are we. He looked at his phone and said "five minutes." What age group? He said "U17." I looked behind me hoping another referee was on the way. There was no one coming to my rescue. I looked back at the players and saw SCCL patches on the sleeves. Southeastern Club Champions League. I asked, "So this is U17 Boys SCCL?" The visiting coach said "No, sir. This is SCCL-Premiere." Well, this just keeps getting better. The game restarted and it was obvious I was out of my element. I called what I saw and didn't call what wasn't obvious to me. But I'm thinking I should have called those as well. The game was so fast. It devolved slowly but surely. Even the obvious fouls were met with some complaints. Finally, an obvious push in the back was greeted with a whistle, and the visiting pusher said quite loudly "That's a bullsh** call." I thought red but remembered I left my main cards in the bag. In my haste to get ready, I had only a yellow in my ref wallet in my left shirt pocket. I loaned someone my red weeks ago and never got it back. I gave him a little rope, saying "If you want to disagree with a call, fine. But I won't have that language from someone not yet old enough to vote." He continued to complain and I said "I heard you. You still fouled. Let's get the game moving." He wouldn't let it go, so I said "ENOUGH." Stupidly, I made a conscious decision to let him have the last word as he was turning away. Except his last word was "That's still a bullsh** call." Out came the yellow. It was ten minutes left to go in the half. Five minutes later, I saw the Gator pull up with another referee on board. Another five minutes later, I blew for halftime. I asked the other referee if he had centered full-size fields before and he said "Many times." Excellent. You have the whistle for the second half. He said he'd check with the coaches, and both whole-heartedly agreed. I stayed on as AR1. Turns out that game, and a few others, weren't entered into GameOfficials. I know nothing of how that works. If the league didn't enter them, if the league didn't send the games to the assignor and thus he didn't enter them, or if the assignor did get the games but didn't enter them. I have no idea. I just know from looking in the Schedules part that those games weren't there. My 11:00 and 1:00 ECNL lines (my first ever at that level) went well. So I felt better at the end of the day. But I am in no hurry to ever, EVER, set foot on a full-size field holding a whistle, especially at that level of game again.
Just finished a 2 week stretch where I worked all 4 rounds of the state high school soccer tournament. Round of 16 referee on a boys game. Quarterfinal referee on a girls game. Semifinal referee on a boys game. AR on the boys state final.
AR1 for NCAA D3 men. Visitors in contention for conference championship. Home, well, not so much. When they played earlier in the season, it was 5-0 and the now home team didn't get a shot on goal. In this game, the home team scores first! Visitors score late in the first half, so 1-1 going into the second half. Home coach is trying to establish his power over the officials. His team gets a free kick about 40 yards from their opponent's goal. The wall forms at, IMHO, more than 10 yards. This is near the home bench and their coach is yelling "That's not 10 yards! Pace it off! It's not 10 yards!" I loudly said, "No. It's more like 12 yards." The referee then walks up and moves the wall closer, to 10 yards, in the opinion of both of us. The coach is having a seizure. "THAT'S SIX YARDS!!!!!. THAT'S SIX YARDS!!!!!" "No way, coach." Meanwhile, the whistle is blown and they kick it well over the bar. The coach reminds me of his opinion as we move back up field, which I ignored. And the end of the game, the referee asks me "Did you like my F U move on the free kick?" "Yes!" Final is 3-1 for the visitors.
In my experience top level 17 boys is as hard as it gets in youth soccer. 18 or 19 is still tough but the players are usually more mature. Before you swear off centering on full size fields try a bottom level girls u13 match.
Sometimes I'll just set the wall instead of walking it off. Usually I've done a subtle count as I walked away from the foul location so I can set the wall quicker. A couple of times defenders will get real animated about me needing to walk it off and I'll say, "If I walk it off, you're moving back." Fair warning, that is a relatively high risk line that you have to be prepared to back up. I've only had to walk it out once, small high school game and the kid was wearing a necklace when I got there so instead of selling a yellow for dissent, I got to put him on the sideline for illegal equipment.
ditto. And how many of our games are on fields marked for gridiron football? "Guys, we KNOW where 10 yards is!"
My favorite is when a defender is standing about 45 degrees from the goal line on a corner kick and the attacking team wants me to back them up to the hash mark. Pythagoras says the defender is fine where he's at.
We have a high school coach that yells about the hypotenuse when a ref tries to back his defenders up the full 10 lines for kicks taken toward the side of the field.
State championships, boys, round of 16. AR1 with two good people that I hadn't had the chance to work with all season. Home school is exemplary host for officials (even a referee changing room) and visitors, who had about a 2 1/2 hour drive to get there. Clock operator was a referee, briefly, long ago and has done it at this school for over 25 years. Referee brings out his com system. Haven't used one in a long time. We did a great job of communicating steadily during the game. Not a 'push to talk' system. Our communication made it easy to produce a very, very nice game. At one point, home coach is asking if I saw that handball. The R picks that up from my headset and tells me that it hit the player in the chest, not the arm. The players are just playing, some random trips trying to poke the ball away when the opponent was turning, etc., but only one caution. Crowd enthusiastic but positive sportsmanship. Not a cloud in the sky, upper 50's. For November, I'll take that every time. Home dominating but not scoring. Only goal on a PK early in the second half. No time wasting at all by the home team after that. Even in the last 20 seconds of the game, they were driving to score another. Great way to end my on field high school season. And only a 10 minute drive home. Now to just put the finishing touches on the assignments for the state high school finals. For the second year, we will have an all female crew on one game.
Saturday AM, U11 tourney. Well fought match, nothing big happening, I happen to miss two offside calls in a flipping row, one because the ball came back quickly and he raised his flag as I turned to follow action and the second was a matter of the sun being right behind my ARs flag. no big deal, only parents were griping. Last ten minutes and GK slide to save a ball in upper PA, but it squirts out of her hands. The attacker who was pulling up sees it and get to the ball as keeper flails for it. Ball goes into the net, keeper stays down. I jog over and she's holding her ear, she stands up, but is upset. It's around 34F, I ask if she's ok "she hit my ear with her knee" I say "yeah, it's stings a little worse when it's cold. You need to come out, or are you ok?" "I'm ok, it just stings." This took all of 20-30 seconds, I turn around and her coach is RIGHT in my face and says "She had possession of the ball!" He has ZERO interest in the well-being of his player. I look at him, confused for a second, waiting for him to tend to his kiddo, but he just stands there, all angry-faced. "She DID, but only for a moment before it slipped from underneath her. Goal is going to stand, and DON'T step onto the pitch again, unless I've beckoned you on." I'd have let it slide had he gone straight to the kid, it happens a lot, I ask kid if they're ok, they usually are, I turn around and coach is coming on to the pitch. I let it go at younger ages, I'm not a monster, I get it, but you'd better tend to your kid. I've got a thing with people walking up behind me already. Geeze! Should have probably cautioned him, but I was managing my emotions because I went straight to 100MPH, so didn't want to react and escalate things. Guess I've got something to work on for next season