Best Story of the WEEK 2021

I have been officiating for 10 years, and I am going to say this: please do not think like this. For one, IF you are trying to achieve the higher level and are hitting a wall, it often has nothing to do with how good you are, but with what kind of people you know to help you along the way, what kind of games are available and just what area you are in. So, just because somebody is doing games like this within 2 years and somebody has not in 10 years does not mean they are a better referee. They might be, but this has nothing to do with it.

Also, there is absolutely NOTHING wrong with being a grassroots referee. In fact, I'd argue that having a good, experienced referee who does U10 or U12 games and is active on these forums and wants to learn and improve is a huge improvement to the game at the, well, grassroots level. You ARE serving the game while making some money on the side. Mutual benefit. You have no obligation to advance anywhere beyond that. Do what you want, enjoy what you do and that's really it!

 

Why is dismissing an entire sideline unfair to the compliant parents, yet you seem to be okay with abandoning a match, which not only still punishes the compliant parents but has the added punishment of ruining the game for the coaches and kids?


I have had to clear the sidelines a few times. Usually, it has been in tournament games where for some reason parents are angrier and I start hearing yelling between both sides of parents. I stop the game, go over to the coaches and tell them what's happening, go over to the spectators and tell them if I come over there again everyone is gone. I pull the old George Costanza



It's not even for comments directed at the referee crew. It's usually parents yelling at players, then the players yell back, then their parents want to defend their kids. It's pathetic. Even more pathetic when the kids thank me for throwing everyone out.

 

I realize that you were responding to posts from two different people, so what you said may not have applied to both of us. I really don’t think I have a defeatist attitude as a referee, but I’ve long been aware of my limitations as a referee. Never in my career would a sane person have wanted to put me in the middle of a men’s open amateur match. That’s never happened. If it had, I would have asked the assignor “Are you sure about that?” My ability peak (as an unathletic person who started to referee in his mid-40s) was never high, and my ever-advancing years mean I’m nowhere near my long-ago peak. If I see a newish referee getting far more advanced games than I ever could have handled, I assume that that referee’s assignors are sane and that the assignments are based on ability. I wish such a person well.

We agree wholeheartedly on that. I’ve been a happy “grassroots” referee for over 25 years, never even wanting to go from an 8 to a 7; I could do the local low-level women’s games as an 8. When my skills erode enough that I can’t handle mediocre U14 games and the like, I’ll probably emulate a good friend, age about 75 and a referee for 40 years. He’s now chugging around the field on U10 games. Of course, I’d have to learn about build-out lines.

 

Thanks for the comment. It's not that I feel angry or upset at anyone, just at myself because I waited almost 15 years to start actually taking refereeing relatively seriously. I definitely don't have delusions of grandeur that by now I would have been a high regional doing USL matches or a national doing MLS games. I know that never would have happened. In fact I probably still never would have even gotten a regional badge, I've heard of the politics and ass-kissing you have to do to move up.

It's just more thinking about the years I could have been doing the old DA matches, high school, maybe college, and adult amateur rather than pissing around at lower level youth games. Our area's UPSL/NPSL/WPSL adult amateur actually has a 2/3 regional 1/3 grassroots split and that's probably as high as I would want to go anyway.

 

Thank you but a lot of it was probably luck of the draw, availability and timeliness. It does help that my availability was pretty much Sat 9AM to Sun 9PM which did not help with the family life at all. Will definitely be lowering the number of games I do in 2022 for sure because of it. I can be there for the kids but I also have to be there for my family and a lot of weekends were spent away from home.

But, I will also concede that fitness of course played a part and I'm one of the more fitter referees of the bunch that had a wide availability.

One last thing: it seems like assignors do not talk to each other. 99% of my games come from my main assignor who assigns regular state league play along with ECNL, ECRL, NPL, DPL and other high-level leagues. The SAC assigns the leagues I debuted in that are higher-level like WPSL and NISA's PPL and my National Assignor assigns USL-Academy and MLS Next league.

The thing is, my main assignor has only assigned me ONE ECNL Center and TWO ECRL centers with a couple ECNL ARs. Highest NPL center? U16M. Now I did get a U19G DPL center which was nice. Other than that -- U19M D1 state league.

With the SAC, I got some ARs on games where they needed fit referees who knew their business. Then with the MLS Next... I'm getting assigned TWO of the SEVEN U19M MLS Next games of the 2022 Spring season. That's huge.

Wait... what about the referees who are doing regular U18M ECNL/ECRL/NPL centers? Surely, they're more qualified, no? What about the referees doing the WPSL/PPL centers? Are they not getting any MLS Next action from the NATIONAL assignor?

It's so strange I get these higher-level games yet I barely have any ECNL experience as a referee. But I am definitely grateful for the opportunity.

100% this. There are only ~25 Regionals in Alabama so I took every opportunity I got (of which there were some) but it was clear there's already a next crop of Regionals coming up and I am most definitely not in it. I get it. (Even though one of soon-to-be Regionals started a year earlier). Politics, I'm sure, has a say in it as I've been alluded to and it's just exhausting. You definitely do have to know the right people and be in the right group which is unfortunate because I just want to referee games and give back to the community but coming across opportunities is limited.

I don't have the game count (and I am FAR away from it). I need like 42 more center assignments and there's two adult leagues in town of which seem to put out schedules late so I never get a chance because I'm already doing games (from my main assignor) on the day they have games to schedule.

I'll be 30 next year so my limit is Regional. Definitely achievable but I'm kicking myself I didn't start sooner since I started at 27. I already know I will not be doing College (too much time to invest) so I'm content with being the best referee I can be at a Regional level. Maybe I'll get that in 5 years. Maybe in 7.

Either way, there's a limit for me. No delusions of grandeur. I also happen to like my day-job so I don't do for the money which is unfortunate because a lot of referees I see only put in shifts "for the money" and it's obvious because I enjoy refereeing higher-level games.

 

This post, and others, shows that we all need to find our level as a referee and be comfortable with it.

For me, I'm in my mid-40s and have a kid who plays high-level club. Once upon a time, I was encouraged to go after my state badge (this was 15+ years ago). Marriage and kids happened, so that became an afterthought. Now that I have a job that has its busiest time of year in late summer/early fall, I have to pick and choose my spots for college. My family, watching my kid play, and my job are my first three priorities. Refereeing's a fairly distant fourth, and I'm good with that. I may go weeks doing U13 to U18 club games in the fall on the weekends.

I realize my place on the "food chain". I feel like I'm a good official who can run the line on pretty much any non-professional match, and I am solid as a center for many college and amateur matches. Because of my son's club schedule, I work a lot of upper-level youth club matches. That's actually a good place for me, because I'm often working with the young future regional/national candidates in those games. They get to work with an experienced referee who knows what he's doing, and I can help them understand some of the "behind the scenes" items that will help them going forward.

I know this is obvious, but not everyone's going to be a FIFA or a PRO referee. The key is to be in a place where you enjoy officiating. That has a different definition for all of us.

 

it takes an unusual context, but on occasion I agree that it can be appropriate. I’ve done it once. 9-0 in a 10U rec game with many parents yelling onto the field that there was ice cream if they got to 10-0. I turned around and said that if I heard the word ice cream one more time the touchline was being cleared. And yes, I would have actually done it and would have been supported by the league. They got the message and it ended. But it does take an unusual situation for it to make an iota of sense.

 

The discussion we've had about level of games we ref makes me laugh when I think about how almost every higher level youth game that I've seen get out of hand, it was a regional level who was centering it, and almost always because for some reason, those refs are very slow on the whistle or don't blow it at all, leading to fight and mass confrontations, and the matches I most often see players and coaches walking away saying how bad the refereeing was.

 

Why do you say that college soccer is too much time to invest? Maybe that's true with Division I, but it's not really so with Division III and junior college.

 

Depending on where you live and the proximity of colleges, it can be a significant time investment.

Here's an example for me working a Division III men's/women's doubleheader on a Saturday starting at 1 PM that's 55 miles from my house.

Leave the house at 11 AM to be at the field by noon.
Matches start at 1 PM and 3:15 PM, so end by 5:30 PM
Arrive home at 6:30 PM

So that's a Saturday taken up by officiating two matches. Many colleges also have matches that start mid to late afternoon, say 4 PM. In the situation above, I'd have to take a couple of hours of vacation to work that match. I can do that a few times, but definitely not 1-2 times a week.

I'm pretty fortunate in that I have three Division I programs and several NAIA and D3 programs within 45 minutes of my house. Plus, collegiate conferences usually do want you to work matches outside of your home area. For example, I may have to travel 2-3 hours away to work other matches in the conference.

 

With a majority of what @RefIADad said... a lot of it also has to do with politics. I'm fine doing youth and adult matches because that will make me happy.

But a majority of it is due in geographical purposes of where I live in Alabama. Not exactly a hotbed for soccer or why people move here.

 

Fact. I can get all the state league games I want within a one hour drive. But if I want the alphabet soup games (NPL, GPL, ECNL, ECRL, SCCL, USYS NL, etc) I have to drive 90-360 minutes away.

 

Seriously. Just stop with this bullshit.

Calling someone butthurt over this is totally unacceptable.

 

Interesting that you use this example, considering that if sendoff-able language comes from a player on the bench and you don't know who said it and no one fesses up, you send off the coach for it.

Also, using the words "ego" and "butthurt bully" when referring to referee abuse is absolutely comical. So let me get this straight: referees get tons of verbal abuse, going out to do their jobs and verbal vitriol spewed at them and their character is not only accepted, but encouraged as part of the game; the abuse that makes referees quit doing something they enjoy; and then if a referee gets enough of it in a match that he gets rid of the spectators, somehow HE'S the bully and his ego is too big to want to accept the type of treatment. So if he can't tolerate receiving constant abuse, it's actually HIS fault for being too weak. When if normal people got the type of abuse referees receive from their coworkers/bosses at their day job, they would likely be in HR demanding terminations or threatening lawsuits for hostile work environments. But referees are expected to tolerate it and they're just butthurt bullies with huge egos if they don't.

Incredible.

 

Well said.
It's a form of victim shaming.
No...actually it IS victim shaming.

 

In all honesty, this guy has no business being a moderator on this forum. He constantly trolls referees and does so much that, if he wasn’t a moderator, would at least get him a yellow card. The really sad thing is that since he’s a moderator, we can’t ignore him.

It’s a classic example of using a bully pulpit to do things that the general posting public can’t do, and someone at Big Soccer needs to deal with it.

 

Maybe he got his team's sideline kicked out and holds a grudge?

 

It has been suggested that it would be good if the moderator tag included the fora moderated. I gather that’s not simple to do, but it would be nice. This isn’t the first moderator to be accused of trolling and inappropriate behavior in a forum they don’t moderate.