I was initially going to be done with my season, but due to Covid situation in Europe, a friend of mine who was visiting can no longer visit. We were scheduled to be in Miami right now and so I had blocked off both of the December weekend tournaments. Since that changed, I decided to sign up and do them. Big referee shortage all around, and it is a college showcase and we have U-18s. So I am the experienced official on the 4 man crew for the field. All of them are kids, HS and college. One is not doing any centers, AR only, the other does one center. I have 3 centers. This kid's center comes around and he is not moving at all. He walks around the field, he is 40 yards away on corners etc. I try to help him by pointing, but he does not get it. At half time, I ask if he is interested in some suggestions and pointers. He said absolutely, he always wants to learn. I tell him that for the most part he is walking and he needs to be running. It is a relatively fast game with older kids. Every time I say something he gives me pushback: he claims that he does not want to be closer because he almost got run over and he does not want to be too close to play, he does not want to be closer on corners because that's where the play is etc etc. Needless to say, he didn't change his ways. It's one thing when somebody like him is inexperienced and has no clue and knows he has no clue, is willing to listen and makes an attempt to improve. Unfortunately, this was his first center above U-14 and he is so confident and sure of himself that he thinks he's doing a great job. This game was calm and luckily didn't need him to be there. But there were times when there is a scramble in the box and he was in the center circle standing, almost squatting and looking into the box from afar. It was frustrating to watch.
I was just talking with some other track officials about a not dissimilar situation with a young official at a national championship meet. My view was that she didn't have enough life experience yet to know how to respond when someone with gold braid on their hat tells you what to change. She tried to tell the big kahuna why what she was doing was right, during the event. I think most of us have gotten to where we are because we figured out along the way that the correct response in that situation is "Sir! Yes Sir!"
Did you ever get clarity (maybe from your son) on this. I am inferring that when Gray's GK took the free kick, Blue's Keeper was bumped into ( smacked, pushed, punched) in the scramble. Then the ball was cleared, then the Gray keeper made the save at the other end. Regarding the coach during the game... It is always difficult to talk a coach off the ledge if you don't know what ledge he is on. Regarding the parent, does anyone (yet) turn their phone video on after a game like this? In a couple of years, it will be in our training,
The ball never came anywhere close to Blue's keeper on that last free kick. The keeper took the free kick about 10 yards into the attacking half and it didn't even get to the penalty arc. Blue's defender headed it away, and they broke in a mad scramble. The only play I can think of where the parent was mad was where she was fouled pretty hard with about 25 minutes left. If I were in the middle, I would have cautioned Gray's attacker. However, I was an AR and not insisting. The center whistled for a foul, but didn't caution the player. The center had a good look and whistled right away, so there wasn't anything there. I was confused both by the coach and the parent. You're right - tough to talk the coach down when you have no idea what he could have seen. He said the keeper rolled up the back of his attacker's legs, but the attacker did one of those jumps to avoid the keeper and (if anything) lost her balance going down. Certainly nothing the keeper did that endangered safety, and it couldn't have been a DOGSO because the keeper was in possession of the ball.
I'm the opposite of you. I have some flexibility in my workday and can do like an 8-4, or earlier on occasion if the assigner asks nicely, so I'll duck out then and do high school. There's a wide variety in game times- some schools do a 5:00/7:00 JV/Varsity. Some schools don't have lights and start varsity at 3:30 and try to squeeze in as much of a JV game they have light for. Yeah, it's a pretty long day, but honestly? There's not a whole lot else going on weeknights. I'd much rather give up my weeknights than a weekend to do a USSF tournament. So, I do about 80 high school games a year and maybe 6 or 7 USSF games total- just enough to pay for my re-cert and any new uniforms or anything I need. But, yeah, it creates a bit of a doughnut hole in who can do high school games. It's either young guys (seems like 95% guys) who don't have full time jobs and kids yet, and the retirees. Not many of us in the 30-60 age range.
Absolutely true. Unfortunately club soccer is only on weekends so if you don't do weekends you lose all of that experience. My complaint with high school is more just being gone literally all day and working through dinner, then usually getting home so late that by the time you shower and eat, it's basically time to sleep. That's a comical breakdown of games though, I'm usually 6-8 USSF games every weekend in fall. And about the old guys doing HS, that's why I avoided it for a long time. Heard horror stories about the 70 year old guys who never leave the center circle.
I continue to be amazed at the fact that so many areas have mostly young guys doing HS games. Here, at 28, I am the youngest (or 2nd youngest) in the chapter and most guys are over 50. We have no kids doing these games, but also maybe the fact that PIAA requires you to have graduated from high school does not help with that.
TBF it's probably better than the opposite which is your 22 year old regional ref who went to DA nationals getting only lines while your 50 yo+ circle of excellence experts get all the centers. I mean this was the crew that did our womens state final last year from our association. https://www.instagram.com/p/COwSzgujWLY/
Apparently our new HS assignor heard those stories as well. So we have a 66 year old who never gets varsity games. And he is in better shape than most of our non-college age refs. He runs and kayaks. On the field he keeps up easily. But when I asked the assignor why he doesn't get varsity centers, he says "he's too old." Watch him do one, then decide if he is too old or not. But this assignor has never seen the 66 year old do a game.
Our association (and state) also requires you to have graduated (or at least aged out) HS. But since we have UCONN and several other colleges in our region, a lot of the local kid refs don't leave the area when they go to college. This gives me the chance to convince them to work HS Games with me. We do 2 man system for 95% of our games, so we have the 19-20 yr olds and the 35+ yr old newish refs working all the JV games. Often the kid is the better ref, but neither knows the 2 man system. An interesting factor is that many kids don't have cars (not allowed for freshman at UCONN) and need to be picked up. Our assignor has that extra variable to deal with.
We allow anyone in high school to referee high school games. Obvious exception is that they don't do their own school, the assignor has to say "yes, I want this kid" and they can't do varsity DSC centers, although they can do varsity duals. I worked this year with a young referee that, when he mentioned school, I assumed he was talking about college. No, it turned out he was in high school. When my daughter was in high school, she knew she wasn't going to make varsity as a senior, so she got 'special permission' to do high school games. She even was offered a 4th for a playoff game, but declined it because she had a calculus BC exam the next day. (now you need three years of high school experience in order to do playoff games.) We do not have very many high school referees on social security, certainly less than 10% of our membership. Some college and a few high school students, quite a strong group of immigrants who make more per hour doing high school soccer than they get for their day job. We don't require a physical fitness test but we do offer it in connection with pre-season training and almost all of the referees choose to participate. Having administered the test a number of times, it's kind of hard to tell a hopeful older referee that he "averaged a zero" on the old NISOA test. I.e. you aren't going to get varsity games this year.
From WaPo today on the dearth of officials: https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-m...rees-quitting-shortage-sports-officials-quit/
My predecessor as assigner in my conference was horrible in bringing along the youngsters. So much so that there is a huge gap in age with hardly any in the 25-50 range. It will take time but I will change that.
JV game 4:30 PM Varsity game 6:30 PM Center adds 6 minutes stoppage time Don't get out of stadium until 8:15 Get home around 8:30 After showering and getting organized, don't get to eat dinner until 9 PM Classic
Must be nice. Three fourths of our games add a one hour (or more) commute to that timeline. And what’s this stoppage time you mention? Must not be playing NFHS rules.
At least you guys get paid to be there. Try being a parent who's kid dresses for both JV & V and gets to play maybe 10 minutes in some games, but entire other games. Go straight from work, watch JV with your child on the bench thinking 'OK, this means they'll be playing V', then they get 10 minutes in the V game. We've had other times where working concession stand for JV, you've got to be there early to get that going, then child at least plays most of the V game.
Try this one instead: Leave work at 2:20 Meet the rest of the crew at 2:45 2 hour drive to the field VG at 5:00, VB at 7:00 Leave the field at ~9:00 Home by 11:00 Dinner? What dinner?
I realize that I am an extreme outlier, and that it also put a pretty hard ceiling on how far I will go in my refereeing "career." I just can't justify spending 10 hours on a gorgeous fall Saturday listening to Coach Dads teach their kids to play boot and chase.
Yep. As my wife once quipped to me before I went away another beautiful Fall Saturday where I wouldn't be home from 12 - 6PM.... "The money is great but you can't buy time with money..."
I'm going to play both sides of the fence next year (spring 2023) when my kid starts playing high school soccer. In many cases, these games have a "JV2" game where players who aren't getting much playing time from freshman to senior are playing, followed by a sophomore and then a varsity game. I'll do the JV2 games as part of a dual. The score is on a scoreboard, but there's a running clock and no one really cares about the final score. For his home games, I'll then move up to the press box to handle PA duties. If nothing else, having a kid in high school soccer will give me some mandated days off and keep me fresh for other games.
Here we play both boys and girls high school soccer in the spring season. I worked one game date where my daughter was playing because the assignor was desperate, AR2 for the VG and center for the VB. Both games had moderately controversial calls (not by me in the VG and not against my daughter, fortunately). I decided afterwards that I wasn't going to work any more games at that school as long as she was playing. Even the perception of conflict of interest was more than I wanted to deal with at that level. YMMV.
That's why I never do any "meaningful" games (i.e. games that impact conference standings, etc.) for my school district. Not only does my son attend one of the schools and will eventually play soccer, there, but I'm also the district's financial controller (one step below the CFO). There are so many other games in our area that it's just a lot better for me to work other schools. Plus, it's easier on our payroll department since my game fees have to be paid through payroll, which adds some administrative hassle for social security, state pension contributions, etc. compared to just being paid as a vendor at other schools. When we get to the high school playoffs, I do not work matches in the regional brackets of either high school unless and until they are eliminated (and even then, it would probably be more of an emergency substitute situation). So if High School A is in Region 2 and HS B is in Region 3, I'll work the other regions or work lower divisions. If either of my district's schools are in the state tournament, I don't work the large school division. Given both schools have very strong soccer programs, I've accepted that I'll generally work the two lower divisions of our state tournament if and when I have the honor of working a state tournament. I'm OK with that - my day job comes first, and being a public school financial leader has a certain set of expectations.
A while back, we only had two classifications for the state championships, big schools and small schools. One year, when my older daughter was in high school, I was doing one of the small schools' championship game. On the crew with me was a parent whose daughter also played at the same school. When the assessor told us after the game what a great job we'd done, he said, "You shouldn't feel bad about only getting the [small schools] game." The other parent said, "We're [name of school] parents! We'll never get a [big schools] game!" That was in the time when the girls went 124 games undefeated. The boys were in the final almost every year as well. And neither of us ever did a big schools' championship.