How's Utah doing? (nobody asked...) Well, this should shed some light on the situation Most relevant section: Effective immediately UYSA will enforce a ZERO TOLERANCE policy in regard to any inappropriate behavior towards referees. Under the directions of the President of the Association for the remainder of the Spring 2022 season, any coach, parent or spectator at the field that berates a referee, will result in a strict no spectator season going forward. Meaning - that team will not be allowed to have ANY spectators on the sideline for the remainder of the Spring season. I straddle the fence as both a coach of two youth teams (u10 & u12) and referee. Watching the reaction to this come out has been interesting, to say the least. Some parents (who weren't the problem) are extremely supportive. Others (who are the problem) find the punishment "too severe". Ref's are very supportive of it, but still want a (substantial) pay increase
There was a brief discussion here: Best Story 2022 It's a step in the right direction if they actually follow through, but who wants to work the last game of the season? The first youth sports league that bans spectators for all games will be the first to see it's ref shortage disappear.
We're into State and Presidents Cup season. Wow is it a struggle to get decent refs. They ended up having to accept a teen who had never done anything above u14. Let's just say he was very confused when I had a red for dogso considering he had never given a card before.
I'm going to guess that many games nationwide are going to be canceled for Mother's Day (or have parents doing them if ROC allows) since many of us don't officiate on that day or are available for only a small part of the day. I've been assigned one game on Sunday even though my calendar is closed on GameOfficials, which I find rude. I would have no problem with someone reaching out to see if I can do it, but to assign it with my non-availability being clear is disrespectful on a day folks celebrate with their loved ones and not worthy to take my time to even reject it. I've seen several emails this week for high level matches looking for referees. The coaches will be happy to accept one referee for their match until an offside is missed in a one goal contest.
I used to be very good about keeping my GO availability updated, but starting last fall I haven't even bothered as I know they are going to be desperate for referees. I've already got a lot assigned for this month (whereas in the past it was a week-by-week type thing) and it's hard to keep up with all the "urgent" emails going out every single week begging for help covering games.
Or the 'urgent e-mail,' about once a month, to fill some games three time zones away. Yeah. I'll get right on it.
I'm really surprised to see so many games on Mother's Day as well. Soccer was closed on Easter Sunday but this looks like one of the busiest Sundays I've seen in a while. That's when you break out my patented (for 4 days now) solo technique of running up and down the touch line and completely ignoring 80% of the field to put all your focus on offside.
It’s the last day of pool play around us for State Cup, so it’s a packed schedule. I’ve opted out for games on Sunday (except as a parent - son’s team plays at 8am), but I have 2 games on Friday and 5 on Saturday.
I think Mother Nature is fixing our referee shortage for a local tournament I was scheduled to work on tomorrow. On grass fields.
Yeah, same issue around here as well. The one set of fields I'm scheduled to work tonight aren't exactly known for their good drainage either.
Locally we are done for the season. Just the occasional postseason tournament an hour or more away. I emailed an assignor two hours away letting her know i was going to be in town to watch an all star HS game. In less than a minute I was assigned three games there. As a referee it will be great being able to get as many games as you want. When I start assigning locally this fall, I may age quickly like POTUSes do.
I understand why grass is preferred to turf but it surprises me when high level games/tournaments are played on grass and risk rainouts. A local club that has MLS Next has an EXTREMELY nice 3 grass field complex (basically like grass carpet, no divets, no gophers, no weeds, pristine) that the city is extremely paranoid about getting wrecked. Back in March there were a few SPRINKLES in the morning at 7:30 AM and they shut down the entire fields for the day, including 9+11A MLS Next matches. There is an extremely nice 3 turf field complex about 4 miles away from the grass complex in the same city/club that you would think they would schedule all these matches on.
If I were running a club and building a bigger complex with a bunch of fields, I'd aim for one extremely nice grass pitch ("championship field") with the bulk of the fields being turf due to the rainy/muddy conditions in my region. To keep turf costs down, I'd try to keep a couple grass fields on the low-end that weren't pristinely maintained. If those fields get trashed, so be it. I was AR2 on a game with a SoCal team a couple weeks back and the parents behind me were complaining about how long the grass was. I thought the grass was perfect. Welcome to the Midwest
Our local MLS Next assignor has taken to putting out calls to other assignors. These games are going to be lotteries.
Round here it's a similar picture. The assignor is really frustrated and so are the teams. The teams expect top refs... But the numbers just aren't there.
Utah published a long FAQ - obviously written for non-referees - on their new zero-tolerance policy. https://www.utahyouthsoccer.net/blo...IDHdgdBN3qlf4WX48ATytdtl6_jrNg4TL94L079Hn0Ezg I
"Referees should get a thicker skin." How about "Fans should get a thinner tongue"? It makes sense that UYSA should put the "thicker skin" in their FAQ, but still, referees have signed up to deal directly with (share space with, not interact with) players and coaches. Parents are incidental. I did quite like this: "Parents – there is no reason to speak with a referee."
How the hell is this so hard for them to understand that they need this long winded but, sadly, completely necessary FAQ to get this through their thick skulls? They aren't saying that parents can't say anything. It is simply to not be abusive verbally towards referees or physically confront them. Quite a simple concept. Don't scream obscenities at a referee, don't get in a referee's face. A very simple answer is "If it's treatment you wouldn't want to receive at your own job, don't do it to a referee doing theirs." Pathetic.
Bruh, nobodies gonna read this, at least not the problem people. The poor treatment of officials is a broader human conduct issue and it’s not going away no matter how many emails/faqs/bulletins/cancelled games we have. There will be a referee shortage the rest of all of our lives.
I thought the FAQ write up was well done. Fair point about the folks needing to read this the most won't read it. At least Utah is trying.
As a ref and coach in Utah, the games we've had since that Zero Tolerance email was sent have been some of the very best to attend. Had an incident this last weekend where a player on my 2010 team committed a SPA type foul at midfield. It was called but the ref let him off with a warning. The other coach grumbled but not much was said. About 5 mins later the same kid got undercut on an aerial challenge. The ref deemed that one a yellow. The opposing coach went through a range of emotions, eventually just clapping to his player for being aggressive and moved on. All in all, you can tell most sidelines are nervous. Which, honestly, I prefer over the nonsense I've heard for years out here. State cup for girls and U11-U14 boys is coming up next week, we'll see just how well this policy is adhered to then.
Thanks for the Utah update ... I'm curious if the State will stick to their guns. The FAQ at least sounds serious. Hopefully your recent trend of quiet sidelines will continue.
Utah Grassroots here. I do youth (every age group and level), adult and high school. For the youth clubs (which the "zero tolerance" memo was concerning), yes, I have in fact witnessed markedly less vocal parents at matches since then. So far, been pretty good. I even got a few jokes from parents before matches saying they would "be good" etc etc. So all in all, I think the approach of adding all the parents into the penalty bucket, as opposed to just the bad ones (which would never have read the memo) is working.