How much should a ref expect in an elite amateur league? Asking because I have the manual for the UPSL. I'll give the figures after I see a few answers.
I'm assuming you're getting something like 75/60/60/45? UPSL and NPSL are what they are. Heck, non-PRO USL matches only pay 218 / 131 / 75 anyway. UPSL and NPSL are just part of the ladder. If you want the money, college is the route. Maybe a helpful additional note: If you're trying to climb the ladder, it's not a bad place to cut your teeth, especially if you're in an area where it's a new club and the assignor is sending out a "hey I have a UPSL club now, please help" email. Getting in early could look really good for the assignor, who maybe tells the NPSL assignor, who maybe tells your USL2 assignor, etc...
"Should" is a loaded question. First off, the competition in UPSL can, on occasion, be "elite" but it's not an elite league. Second, you're talking about a national league with one pay structure, but various costs of living come into play. Some people will hear the fees and say "wow," while others who know them say "are you kidding?" Third, UPSL, I believe, has an absurd manual (see point one above) that--at least last year--was strewn with spelling mistakes and contradictory information, but then asked you to appear either 90 or 120 minutes before kickoff time. So we're not just talking about fees for a 2-hour window when you consider what is being asked of officials. The truth is that if we're talking about "elite" leagues and competition where an officials is giving a minimum of 6 hours of his/her time for a match when you include travel and reporting, I'd say 150/100/100/75 is the minimum threshold (and I'd actually argue for something closer to 200/125/125 and to just not assign a fourth). I also think that's where DA should be, since we are talking about elite play. The reality is that's not going to happen any time soon. A lot of these leagues that develop disappear a few years later due to spreading themselves too thin and that's with the paltry referee fees offered. Will USPL survive with a $75 fee for whistles? Probably for a bit. It won't survive with $150 or $200 referee fees, though.
Funny this should come up. I've actually done a fair number of their games because one of the fields is 7 minutes from my house and I'm on the side of town lacking in adult quality referees. Around here it pays about on par with the largest Men's Amateur league, which when you factor in needing to be there a full hour earlier, doesn't add up. But, I do them because the LAC is the assignor and it can never hurt to do assignments for him.
My experience with this league and similar leagues from the past is that quite often the participants also play in the top "local" amateur leagues. Very often it's the exact same clubs. What can be interesting is that you'll see some cross-league competition among the better teams, but that's really the only difference. It's not like these UPSL clubs have players exclusive to the league who you don't see elsewhere. It's important to cut through some of the glitzy words like "elite" and "national." Effectively these are regional divisions--sometimes state-specific divisions. It's the same teams and players you see elsewhere. UPSL markets itself a certain way, but when push comes to shove it's just another high-level opportunity for better players to contest another competition. Referees should approach it the same way. It's not like the really good amateur team that gets its 11th guy at the field three minutes past kickoff is suddenly going to morph into a professional operation just because the Referee Manual says they are supposed to do so. Long way of saying it's not a surprise that the pay is the same, despite the marketing.
Wow! Here in Pennsylvania we get paid 65/46/46 for any level U-17 youth game. And EDP youth league used to pay 90/45/45, but they lowered it to PA fees (other states apparently it still pays 90/45/45). Interesting to hear of an amateur adult league paying $75 for a whistle...
I live in a larger state with a lot of officials and many officials who come from other states can’t believe how low are fees are. The problem is that when you have so many officials leagues know this. They go with one group and then realize they want to cut fees down and then go with another group. Referees are so tribal to some assignors they work exclusively for them. So that’s how you get a state where amateur pays 65/45/45 for men’s league 2nd division match and 75/55/55 for the top division.
75/60/45 is correct. Just curious to see how it stood up to other leagues. No, I will not be doing these games, even after a few years of experience.
UPSL was started to try and compete with NPSL. I believe one of the team owners use to play in the NPSL and got fed up with the mileage. So he branched off and made another league.
From my experience UPSL, NPSL, etc are just glorified Sunday morning amateur matches with a referee manual. Your mileage, in regards to quality and professionalism, may vary on what part of the country you live in. I've heard that in the north east that the NPSL is a pretty high level and well organized level of soccer. With my experiences refereeing these leagues it's usually your local unaffiliated Hispanic team that wants to take a crack at a more "organized" and "professional" level of soccer. The games are good to referee in the sense you get a challenge in management and misconduct selection, but the quality of play is very poor in terms of technique. I did a UPSL game last year where the game was scheduled to be played at where one of the local unaffiliated hispanic leagues plays. The crew and I show up 90 minutes before game time and the facility is completely empty. We call up the assignor and it turns out they decided to play in another part of town. The home team didn't bother to tell the referees. We go drive over there and show up 5 minutes before kick in a youth football (American) stadium. The pitch in no way shape or form came closely to meeting the specifications according to the Laws. There might have been 5 yards between the end line and the penalty area. One of the teams doesn't have the required match day line up sheet and roster. So they just write the players and numbers on a piece of blank notebook paper. The game ends up being like 7-1. I scan in the paperwork and send an email to the league telling them how they didn't meet hardly any of the requirements in the handbook/referee manual. I never heard back from the league... I don't think UPSL and NPSL are also stepping stones to bigger and better things if you're interested in catching the right people and moving up, at least my in part of the country.
I find it quite staggering that the DA fee structure has not changed one cent in over 10 years that it has been in existence. The commitment and time they ask of you demands more than a $75 game fee that was implemented 10 years ago. I guess with more teams being added to DA every year and, seemingly, more age groups being added every year that an increase in referee fees would make quite a significant dent in US Soccer's budget especially considering they have to pay all those salaries of the coaches that they fire for not being able to make the World Cup or the Olympics. You have to show up one hour before game time, do a rigorous check in and then fill out a pretty extensive game report in person and online along with scanning the game report in. Not to mention potentially having to recorded a total of 14 substitutions. Your local men's league games are paying you now $65-$75 where you can practically show up 10 minutes before game time and shorten halves either to the teams not showing up on time or it being a lopsided game. All you have to do is put the score and record the goals and cards and hand it back to the teams. No online game report necessary and you get paid in cash.
Plus the travel demands they ask of you. Being a certain grade to work certain matches. On top of you go to events they have meetings, continuing education, field sessions and you have to cover usually your breakfasts and dinners. But... it’s a pathway for those who want to journey down it.
UPSL and NPSL are nowhere near each other in terms of organizational acumen. NPSL splintered off from PDL (now USL League Two) and is a healthy summer league catering mostly to college players, with a couple of teams thinking they should be playing at a higher level but not wanting to enter League One or NISA for reason. They've had a lot of turnover in recent years, but they're trying to raise the bar with league standards to prevent that. See my interview with Kenny Farrell. UPSL is simply Hoovering up any amateur team it can find, because the Atlanta Caribbean League needs to send its champion to a national playoff. I'm not sure why these teams weren't happy with their USASA leagues and the Amateur Cup, but there you go.
We get paid a dollar a minute so that U-17 match at 90 minutes is $90 in the middle. I have an EDP u14 center Saturday morning for $70.
Dang you guys are making me feel better about HS games. We're now getting $69/$43.50 for diagonals but better yet $66 for duals, which are most of what I do, plus one-way mileage. And $51 for JV and middle school duals, which are only 35- and 30-minute halves, respectively. And we almost always get two games.
Good'ole DC Area finally got a raise. $73/$54/$54 for a 3-man crew varsity, and $64 for JV two-man. Of course, compared to ATL cost-of-living, well, I think they still win. For all the madness you can get at those games, I'd need at least $150 to show up. $100 for the ARs. And with the stats work they make the 4th do, throw them $75. That current rate is practically stealing money from top-tier refs.
HS pays better than equivalent youth around here too, although not by much. Most HS varsity games we get $72 each for DSC and anything sub-varsity is solo at $58 - but it depends on the assignor. Best USSF youth match fee I can get is $65 for U19, and not all clubs pay the same. One of my assignors pays more if you have less than a full crew, so it is possible to get $90 if you are solo on a U19 match, but that never happens.
We do a lot of adult league men solos, including O-30 and O-40 that are nearly full field, pay $90 and are really not worth it. They're official games in EPA, you run your butt off and learn a lot of game and man management there. The league has calmed down a lot since a mass brawl ended with one team getting completely ejected from the league and none of the players ever allowed back in. Everybody got the message.
In general yeah that's an ugly picture, but I did one girls U19 match last season where solo would have been more than adequate.
Without diverting the topic, the girls (and women's) matches, the play is not up-down up-down rapidly, so as a referee, even though the distance run is almost the same in girls and boys matches, there is significantly higher distances jogging, and running with a slight decrease in high speed running in girls matches, walking and stationary distance and times are similar. There is also a significantly lesser fouls-count, however much higher ratio for fouls/card in girls matches.
Idk about this. Some of the women’s games I do they play a more athletic long-ball style of play as opposed to men’s games where they play heavy possession and build out the back (which is nice) so I agree I may not run as much in men’s game. I feel like the women’s game I run more sometimes while the guys games I do higher short distance running. YMMV