I just contacted Soccer America and they might have some interest in an interview: https://www.nytimes.com/1982/05/14/sports/sports-of-the-times-linesman-betty.html
As treasurer for our local organization, I can't tell you how many checks I issue to refs for payment of games that are forfeited because the teams don't want to travel to our region 2-3 hours away from the leagues main metro area. Usually happens later in the season when a team realizes they suck or playing for nothing. Parents and clubs decide the forfeit penalty is cheaper than the cost of the drive.
I was on the line of a D3 college game a few years ago. When the referee played advantage, I heard the assistant coach yell, "We want the foul instead!" Then he whispered to me, "We have a great set play for that."
A few years back, it was summer time, almost the end of the spring season. A regional league game of U14 boys. Hot day. One team had traveled from New Hampshire to NJ. Kid on the bench for the NH team said to his friend that he hadn’t played in a game since it was “cold out.” For that, he had gone on a bus for a 10 hour round trip.
but, he was from a town called SeaCoast, so he took a bus ride to see the ocean, which is literally the same Ocean his town is named after.
Doing a encl U14 game and the best player gets fouled near the bench. He keeps going dribbling towards the corner flag so I wait. Coach says there's no advantage so I call the foul. Just as I blow the whistle he delivers a perfect cross towards the head of a unmarked teammate on the penalty spot. I just point at the coach and to his credit he tells his team and parents that it was on him.
Past weekend CRing U19 girl match, ECNL-lite vs. NPL team. Could tell before match that NPL coach was gonna be a jackass. 30 minutes in, contested ball in front of corner flag in front of my AR1, goes over end line, AR1 steps away for a second, him and I simultaneously immediately directly signal corner kick (for ECNL team). NPL coach down touch line on other side of midfield immediately starts yelling "Why was the AR looking for me for the signal, he was 3 feet away", arms outstretched, etc. I stop match and jog over to coach to explain to him the call, then when I tell him my AR immediately signaled for corner kick so I don't know what he saw, he starts calling for me to relax, this is the first thing he said all match (true), it's not a big deal, and to stop making it about myself. Probably a bit of my mistake that I was explaining it from 10 yards away instead of right in front of him, but we got a good laugh about how he's the one yelling and carrying on from 50 yards away then starts saying that I'M THE ONE who needs to relax and stop making it about myself.
Tonight I was at the local club’s recreational league games as a mentor. The game I’m watching is 1st grade girls. A player I’ll call blue 1 has stopped playing and is having difficulty tying her shoe. Blue 2 kneels down and proceeds to tie her teammate’s shoe while play goes on. Just as she finishes the the ball squirts out of the mob right in front of Blue 1. Blue 2 pops up and delivers a 2 handed shove to blue 1 knocking her to the ground and takes off with the ball.
On cancelling in advance: I schedule (not assign) games for local rec leagues. I get an email from an admin: "Is the game on Saturday cancelled?" I look, and that club doesn't have any games on Sat. Oh, they meant Sunday. No, it wasn't cancelled. The coach was getting married that weekend so the team couldn't play. Um, and the coach didn't know that before Thursday?
On my short list of favorites is the (then) U11G coach who decided unilaterally and without communication to cancel a game on a possibly-rainy Sunday and "because it was Mother's Day."
You guys know you can send this stuff my way, right? I don't have a lot of time for writing now (working in a school), but I don't mind people sending me ideas.
An icon among referees: Betty Ellis made history on Mother's Day 40 years ago by Mike Woitalla It seems that Betty Ellis tends to work on Mother’s Day. This year, it’s a fire-safety landscaping project at her home in Sonoma County -- although her daughter, Kyle, thinks she can convince her mom to take a brunch break. On Mother’s Day 40 years ago, Ellis' work made sports history. What Ellis did on Mother’s Day 1981 is why she’s on an ESPN “famous female firsts in sports history” timeline that starts in 1938 with Babe Didrikson Zaharias and includes Billie Jean King and Pat Summitt. It’s why some of her belongings are in the Smithsonian. Kyle and her four siblings were there when it happened, at the NASL San Jose Earthquakes’ Spartan Stadium, where Ellis became the first woman to join a referee crew for a men’s professional sports league in the USA – and most likely became the first woman to officiate pro men’s soccer anywhere in the world. Advertisement “A lot of mixed things were going on in the stands,” says Kyle, who was 19 at the time, watching her 41-year-old mom. “Some people were happy about it, and some yelled things like, ‘get your purse and go home.’ It was a long time ago, but what I remember most is how proud we all were of her.” When a fan screamed “Go back to the kitchen!” – one of Ellis’ children yelled back, “She’s great in the kitchen, too!” The NASL announced the hiring of Ellis in April 1981. She debuted as a fourth official, then continued on as an assistant referee back when that was called a linesman. A week after the Mother’s Day debut she ran the line at Portland’s Civic Stadium with Toros Kibritjian in the center. Back in Spartan Stadium – 100 miles south of Ellis’ Santa Rosa home – she had to deal with a superstar named George Best. “Handsome dude, my goodness,” Ellis says. “He was offside on his first goal and I called it. And San Jose was not happy with me. If you ever went Spartan Stadium, you know how close the fans were to the sideline. The second time, he was slightly offside, but I was right on it. We called it back. I thought the crowd was going to climb over the barriers. “He was very flamboyant and oh my he was ragging me. In any other instance, a linesman would have raised the flag, called the ref over and asked him to talk to the player about his ungentlemanly conduct. But I didn't want to bring any more attention on me.” Both coaches told Ellis after the game that her offside calls were correct. Then a reporter asked her about Best’s behavior and how she kept her cool when he was giving her so much trouble. “I said, 'He’s such a classy looking guy and such a classy player, too bad he doesn’t have class.' And they quoted me in the newspaper! The next game, he was so good to me. He didn't say boo.” Ellis, who kept refereeing men’s professional soccer in the indoor MISL after the NASL folded following its 1984 season, started her officiating journey when her oldest child switched from ice hockey to soccer and the volunteer signup sheet was passed around. “The mothers would volunteer to wash uniforms, or bring oranges, or whatever,” she says. “I just did not have the time for that. Is there anything else I could do? 'You could referee,' they said. I had umpired softball games, so I thought that sounded like fun.” She started at U-6, where much of refereeing was reminding the kids which way the other team’s goal was. As each of her children started joining soccer teams, Ellis’ many hours over the weekends on soccer fields spread over several age groups, as did her reffing. “It morphed into reffing the older boys, that morphed into reffing the Latin League, that morphed into doing college, and then I met John Davies," said Ellis. Davies, a former top NASL referee, was also mentoring teenage Brian Hall at the time. Ellis recalls: “John said, 'You have a really great style about you. You handle things well, would you like to learn how to become a higher level referee, maybe a national referee? You will be breaking a barrier, there's never been a woman. But they have to know you earned your way. If you commit to that, I will support you.'" She trained for a year and half to prepare for the same fitness tests required of the males, which included a 400-meter sprint minimum time that wasn’t far off from what women Olympians clocked in at. When she arrived at the national license course in New Orleans for 200 candidates, it was 199 men, and Ellis. The biggest challenge -- the course's final test -- was indeed the 400-meters, to be run immediately after a series of calisthenics and sprints. Ellis came up short, but by less than two seconds. Close enough to earn another shot at it the next morning. Many of the men, despite having spent the night partying, showed to up to support her at 6 a.m. “It was dark and foggy humid,” says Ellis, “A bunch of guys came out. They wore T-shirts -- I have no idea where they found them -- but on the front of the shirts it said: ‘Men of quality are never threatened by women of equality.’ I was so touched by that. It really gave me a lift.” Some of the men, who’d passed the course the day before, joined Ellis for the situps and sprints, and when she started the 400 meters, a couple of them paced her in front and a couple others from behind. She finished four seconds better than the required time. Betty Ellis sported her ref uniform one more time before honoring the Smithsonian Museum's request. Ellis, now 81 years old, works for FIRST IN, an emergency response training company. She had spent most of her life as a teacher after starting out as a nurse. Of all her vocations and avocations, the reffing felt unique. “I skied, I scuba-dived, but refereeing is the most exhilarating,” she says. “It keeps you absolutely present in the here and now for a longer period than anything else. That makes you feel so exhilarated after the game.” Ellis also served as a high school athletic director and coach of both boys and girls teams in Washington state, where one of the players who attended soccer camps she helped run was a teenage Michelle Akers. After day 1 of watching Akers, Ellis sent her to compete with the boys. “I still watch soccer, and I especially enjoy the success of women’s national team, which hadn't even started when I began reffing pros,” Ellis said. “I would have loved to have reffed some of the women’s games. I would have loved to meet the players and encourage them. I’d love to meet the new referees coming in.” As far as making sports history … "I knew I was breaking a barrier, but I didn't know what to expect at the time, but I hoped. I hoped. I'm very happy that I opened the eyes of women who decided to try it too.” COMMENT
I was called by my SRA on Wednesday to officially invite me to Southern Regional Championships! Greenville, SC, here I come!
Last night, I worked JV boys matches at one of the two high schools in the district where I work. It was a "triangular" event where we had three teams playing each team in 60-minute matches. I centered the match of the two visiting teams and ran a line for the two games involving the team in my district. Before the game, one of my partners said, "I like working here. This is the one place where I know I'll get paid on time." Since I'm the finance director for the district, my response was, "Well, if you aren't getting paid on time, I'm who you need to contact. My office is the one writing the checks!"
So, we are back to GHSV games in WI this spring, after a couple of scrimmages last week, we started this week for real. First game I get the whistle, I knew both these teams were V in name alone. One team had exactly 11 players, the other at least had almost 20. I arrive straight from work and realize that my Shoes are sitting on my bench @ home about 50 minutes away. I start to panic because I have my brown loafers that I wear for work and that is it... EXCEPT!! This is my golf league truck as well. I have a pair of golf shoes! Now, before you go off, these are my golf shoes: I don't tell anyone what happened and finished the game with no issues. My watch told me I ran a total of 2.4 miles. 2 highlights, first goal scored by visitor was a CK that was slowly kicked along the line, defender by post tried to clear it, missed ball completely which spooked the keeper who then frantically tried to pick up the ball and fumbled it into her goal... 2nd was two players challenging for the ball along the touchline, Ar is about 5 yards away and I am about 10 yards. Ball is jostling along the line but the ball never completely goes OOB. Both players just stop and look at me. Then the players around them turn and look at me. Game comes to complete stop until the coaches yell at their players to play until the whistle. Game ends 1-1. Everyone happy. Wasn't the most skilled game, but it was competitive...
I love that story. I think a video would be really cool too. Is there a place where NASL games are located to stream or something?
Considering the action in-game, and your footwear, I'll bet they wish they could've taken a mulligan!