How Far Will You Go?

To be honest it depends... for me I have traveled 3 time zones to work matches. As well as driving 8 hrs and having to get a hotel to work games. But I am trying to climb the ladders and trying to be seen by referee coaches.

I think it depends on what your assignor, LAC (National assignor) or college assignor expects. Our national assignor expects us to travel 3 hrs 1 way to work 4O’s and if we don’t want to work them. That’s okay, but don’t expect to be climbing the ladders.

You mention that you aspire to climb the ladders. I would say at some point in your referee career you will make a lot of money for 1 game; but you will also be expected to travel really far for 1 game and lose money refereeing. A lot of people joke that their comes a point where you pay to referee. But I would say that if that is not for you that’s okay “there’s a place for you” somewhere words told to us by a PRO rep in regards to expected commitments (not financial commitments necessarily).

 

No ladder climbing for me, but during high school season I will drive an 1:45 one way a couple of times to help out a school in the middle of nowhere that has a hard time getting referees. Leave at 2:30 PM and home by 11 so it’s not that bad. They’d give me all of their home games if I’d take them, but I’m not that much of a glutton for punishment.

 

I think it's perfectly acceptable for you to send boundaries with your assignor by communicating with him/her. If you're not willing to do that much travel, say that. And I don't think it will significantly affect your ability to go far - until you are ready for the big games which actually require travel. My thing is - there's always more games, there's always a shortage of refs, you need to balance that with what's right for you.

 

The vast majority of my games are within 15 minutes of my home or office. Self assign helps a bunch in that regard. Farthest I've ever travelled is 45 minutes for a couple of tournaments.

 

Do you know who was assigned to games closer to you, where they live, how many games are near where they live, and how much experience they have? Only knowing your own travel and experience is insufficient to know if you are being assigned fairly.

One downside of being a referee is that traveling an hour each way for one game or two games at the same site is much less time worked and paid for than traveling an hour each way for a job you spend 8 hours at. Even things like arriving at least half an hour early are significant if you're being paid for 90 or 180 minutes of work not including arriving early.

 

If I’m reading this correctly, you’re saying that a national assignor will undermine the progress of a referee if they aren’t willing to do spend 10 hours doing a 4O for nothing?

(3 hours there, three hours back, arrive two hours early, two hours game time. 300 miles of round trip driving, 54.5 cents per mile is the irs rate, and last time i did a NPSL 4O I got $45).

That sounds unethical to me. At a minimum, you should be paid mileage at the irs rate.

 

NPSL 4ths don't get paid mileage. Neither do PDL 4ths. Fourth officials aren't given "nothing", are they making a lot of money? no. But they are given a game fee.

Im not disagreeing 3 hours one-way and 1.5 before the game; 1.5 for the game plus another 3 hours back sucks.. its just the nature of the beast. The current NPSL fees were $65 and the PDL was $30 (<------ which I think is wayyyy too low).

Our LAC/National Assignor (every LAC is different) has set out some pretty specific standards. 1) If we don't put up our blocks expect games certain weekends. 2) If you are doing NPSL middles you will get NPSL 4th's so that means you can get a game fee of $195 for a whistle and a fee of $65 for a 4th.

For us it is understood that continual decline's in games can jeopardize our standing working those leagues. Which can affect how far up the ladder we climb. Also, there are ways the LAC tries to mitigate these costs. He tries to put us with official he knows we can carpool with, as well as not giving too many people that 3 hr. PDL 4th unless he needs someone there.

 

Like I mention it just depends on where you live, and what ladder you are trying to climb. I know some people who work HS where games that are consistently turned back means you will probably receive less. But at the same time like @rh89 mentioned you can set your boundaries/blocks with your assignor for your situation. AS a college aged student you might be right. Traveling over 1.5 hrs one way to work matches might be unreasonable. But whatever situation that is maybe in the long run it will pay off.
It all depends what you want out of refereeing too. if you are trying to work a ton of games to make most amount of $$ it may behove you to stay local. But sounds like you are young im assuming (college aged) and plenty of time to dedicate time to officiating as well as balancing college, and social life.

 

Today, I drove 90 minutes to do one U13 SCCL line, then drove an hour back to do three small sided centers Tomorrow I will drive two hours to work five full-size fields, all ARs. Total I will make approximately $275. Plus, I do not have to go with my wife to visit the in-laws. So there is that extra bonus.

But I have no interest in doing high school, college, Gold Cup or World Cup. My top rung will probably be State Cup. But if I never get there, I am happy doing the games I do, from U8 rec helping teach the laws and rules, to competitive full size youth games, to now adult women. Got my second one of those tomorrow. It's also nice taking every dime I get, gross, and put it toward taking a nice vacation and not having to pay any of that from the household budget.

 

At the end of the day, unfortunately, if you're climbing the ladder the answer is "however far they'll give you games." For a non-pro, non-event game, I think the farthest I've ever gone is 8 hours round-trip. It was for an assessment and only one competitive league in my area was still going. Stuff happens, basically.

But there's a reason why I do college matches. It balances out the cost associated with these huge travel requirements.

 

College games pay more than USSF games, unless you are doing USL Pro, MLS, Open Cup or above. How much will depend on the level of college game you are assigned.

So much of this decision depends on the opportunities you have in your local area and how far up the ladder you want to go. For example, I assign our state's high school championship games, from referees nominated by their location association. My commitment to the state high school association, the schools and the teams, is that I will put the best referees in the center, regardless of which association they come from. In reality, that ends up meaning that anyone with the whistle on one of those games is almost certainly a college referee and at least a USSF grade 7, probably a 6. For the good of the game, the high school championship should not be a referee's highest ever game, a "stretch" assignment.


The effect of that principle is that referees nominated by the smaller, more remote associations, have zero chance of doing the center for a final. And I take a lot of static from them and their associations for always giving them AR2 or 4th official. But they have as little as a quarter of the game experience that referees from the larger associations have for just this season. Some of the guys will only have eight or ten high school games in a season. I, myself, did ten high school games or higher last week alone. (No, I don't assign myself to any high school championship games.)


So what can the referees in those smaller areas do? If they want the big games, they have to be willing to travel to do routine games. I forget the name of the referee (Terry Vaughn?), but there was a referee who lived in Iowa, not exactly the center of the soccer universe. He drove to Chicago every weekend to do adult men's games, week after week, year after year. He ended up on the FIFA list. No, there's no guarantee that doing that kind of travel will get you to the next level but without it, you have to change your ambitions. Are you willing (and able) to invest your time and money in doing the travel to, not only be seen, but also to gain the experience of doing more challenging assignments and working with referees who've done even bigger games?

 

It was Terry Vaughn. He would drive from Iowa to do 4ths in Chicago for $50 with no mileage or meal reimbursement, but it meant he was willing to do whatever it took to get to the highest level

 

Yeah! No problem. For instance, most D3 schools that I do, which is the lowest college I do, is $130 for a line and $180 for a middle. I have to be there earlier, and it might be an hour each way, but that's still potentially $35 an hour. For D1 games, the most I've gotten for an exhibition match was ~$300, with regular season matches obviously being more, depending on the school. Unless I'm on the PRO roster, I'm never going to make that much for a USSF game.

Meanwhile, if I do an NPSL, PDL, or USL 4th, it's going to be maybe $50-$75, for what will probably be a 2-4 hour drive each way and need to be there 1.5-2 hours before. If it's 4 hours each way and 2 hour pregame, that's a $6/hour salary for a PDL $50 4th. Objectively that's just not worth it. However, if that's how you have to "cut your teeth" to get noticed and trusted on higher matches, hopefully you don't have to do too many before you're trusted on a line where you get mileage and per diem thrown in.

So, I do a lot of college matches so I can be picky with what I do during the rest of the year. I don't have to try and do a million rec games in my area to make extra money and don't have to run myself ragged doing 5 games-a-day tournaments. But, at the end of the day, if my National Assignor asks me to drive 4 hours each way for a USL 4th, my only response is "Thanks, I would love to."

 

My travel limits vary depending on the games.

For college, I am willing to travel farther because the pay is better. For example, yesterday I drove 2 hours for a women's DII middle that paid $215.

For youth soccer, when I was working my way up, I would travel anywhere up to approximately 4 hours for a weekend tournament. However, I live in an area where there is very little high level soccer, so I had to travel to get experience and be seen. When I was working on my upgrade to 6, and then to 5, I would drive 2 hours one way to work 3 adult games on a Sunday, and then turn around and go home again.

Like many others have said, it all depends on what your goals are and how far you want to advance. You may be happy staying close to home, and get plenty of games. But if you want to "climb the ladder", then you need to travel outside of your area and be seen. Sometimes that means starting at the bottom, and then working your way up.

 

In my neck of the woods. College is definitely where the money is. I haven't worked MLS but USL, NWSL, and Open Cup really doesn't pay all the well in comparison to a D1 game, even soem D2 games. One saving grace for Open Cup is once you get passed round 2 your travel is covered, and depending where you go it can be quite a nice chunk of change. As for the fees, all the fees combined for NISOA, ECSR, etc, are still less than what my State is charging to register as a Grade 5. Not to mention all the assessments that you have to get in order to stay in that grade level.

 

Our college association serves a community college that is a five hour drive from where I and most of us live, each way. It's (usually) two games there (men and women) but somebody is going to get two AR assignments. I haven't had to go there for two years but I will if they assign me there again. Yes, we get mileage but it's a more than all day commitment. One time I was assigned there, I had a guy working for me that had his own plane. He flew me down there, watched the games and we flew back after the second game. The chapter was happy to pay for his gas because 1. it was cheaper than paying per diem and lodging and 2. he was the son-in-law of the chapter president! As the Brit's would say "and Bob's your uncle."


My wife, younger daughter and son also officiate track & field with me. We drive 1 3/4 hours each way to the top meets. No mileage, no pay (except for a fairly nominal amount for the high school championships and NCAA championships.) We love the sport, we love hanging out with the top athletes in the world in our events and we love working with the other people on our crew. And we do like the occasional swag we get. In short, it isn't always about the money.

 

I see a lot of commentary from the "moving up the ladder" crew. My perspective is from the keep busy and make a few bucks side of things. I have been reffing for 10 yrs and am still "only" a grade 8. And I easily get 150+ games a year and about $10K.

A couple years ago when my sons were reffing with me, we would drive up to 2 hrs each way to do tournaments that were paying $20-$40 per game. Not a lot, but we might get $600+ for a weekend and I got to spend lots of time with my boys.

A few years back, my older son and I took the grade 7 course. And when we learned that you must do 10 games a year to keep up your certification and that there were no sanctioned games less than 90 minutes away, we decided it was not cost effective to bother.

Now, I live in a relatively dense state (CT) with lots of soccer. And if I'm willing to drive up to Mass, there are tons more games. If you live in a bigger, more wide open state, you may have no choice but to travel more.

Now that my boys are gone, I have settled into a mishmash of college club, HS, unsanctioned adult, youth Cup, youth Premier and pre/post season tournaments. Don't usually travel over 90 minutes and when I do, it is to do multiple well paying ($60-$40) tournament games.

As an assignor, I come in contact with a lot of UCONN college kids who want to ref. I do my best to get them games, but usually their schedules are too busy to do many. My advice to a college student is get into doing HS games. In our state that pays from $60 (jv) to over $100 (prep). Not bad for a single game and then you can get back to studying............

 

In my association, we get paid for our high school games in one big check at the end of the season. Not great if you want immediate gratification.

 

Our association pays once a month. The problem is that the schools are slow to pay, so the association doesn't have the cash.

 

But by the time it finally comes in it's almost like found found money, kinda like a tax refund.