I ended up working 4 games on the boys side of finals weekend of the Fall Championships on Saturday. (Note, this is the level below Presidents' Cup Qualifiers and finals weekend is a 4 team round robin) What that adds up to is bad soccer played well. Not much in terms of midfield skills. Lots of long balls that where good enough to not go harmlessly out of bounds so way too much sprinting. A friend of mine was the center for the third game of the day, U16. At the end of the game, I was exhausted because I was doing sprints for most of the game. The center sat down, looked at me with wide eyes and said, "[DaytonRef] I'm exhausted. I don't know about this next game." I left him to recover while I went to check in the teams. As we got near the end of the next U13 game I could tell he was slowing down. At one point with less than 10 minutes left I was as deep as he was to signal a goal kick and I heard a couple of parents giving him a gentle ribbing about looking hurt. Because we are friends, I decided I was going to make him look more like a wounded gazel. Every time the ball went over the goal line in his end I made sure that my run ended with me at least as deep as him, including a couple of times with the site coordinator there I looked backwards over my shoulder to find him just so the site coordinator and I could give him some crap after the game. All in all, a good end to the fall season. Sadly high school scrimmages decided to start earlier this year (last Thursday). I've decided I won't be doing any until I get back from Chicago in two weeks and maybe not even then.
I'm not convinced you were wrong. A full two seconds would have been an awful long time to wait in this context--and I would imagine some of the players actually did what they were supposed to and stopped when you blew the whistle, so there's no reason to assume the same thing would have happened without the whistle. Only thing I'd say is when you blow the whistle then, you want to blow it loud enough that everyone stops. [for some reason my browser took me to the above as a new post, which is why I responded]