Out of curiosity, are those EDP fees for Pennsylvania about what you get in western PA or are they higher than average league games there?
Sorry I didn't get to answering this earlier this week. Been a busy week outside of my day job and getting the Iowa soccer season started. Our officials association has a healthy fund balance, so we are paying for this ourselves. We are paying the mentors $40/event (generally a JV/Varsity doubleheader). It's not a huge amount of money, but many of the mentors/coaches are former referees who don't work on-field anymore. There are a few of us - like myself - who will mentor a limited number of times around our on-field schedules, but 60-70% of the mentors are retired and are doing this because they really want to develop the next generation. Given how I felt after two varsity boys centers in three days, I can definitely see myself doing more mentoring in the future. At my age (47), I am still considered one of the younger guys in our high school cohort. However, I'm starting to get too old to work four nights and 7-8 games like I've been doing in past years.
I assign for 6-7 clubs and a bunch of them are going the incentives route. The most common is a $100 bonus for working 10 games in a season. And another $50 for each extra 5. One club offers the incentive AND pays the cert/re-cert fees. Ironically, the largest and wealthiest club in my group does none of this. And yet they have (by far) the largest numbers of kid refs signing up. I just counted - 73 certified refs that live in the town. For a club that has 25-35 games a week. And even more ironically (but possibly logically), this is the lowest paying club in the area). There is just a long tradition of players becoming refs. Quite a few are one and done (partially because I can't get them more than 6-10 games a season), but there is always another 20+ getting certified next year.
Things must be bad. I just got an email asking for referees for the Dallas Cup which is going on this week. That used to be oversubscribed and referees had to be pre-screened before being accepted. PH
First rule of being an assignor. Never take any potential referee out of your database. Email first. Decide if they are legal second. Decide if they are worthy last.
Last year a local assignor told me before a particularly bad weekend that he'd take someone if they have a license and can stand.
Well, we once had an AR, with a State Referee badge, sit in a vacant chair on the parents' side of the field for a while during a youth game. He 'just wanted to see what the parents thought they were seeing.' I don't remember whether we suspended him or gave him a strong reprimand letter.
Or a gold star? Seriously, one of those things that is fun to joke about, but joking about and doing aren't the same thing. . . .
When I was an instructor and assignor I told my students my requirements to referee our rec games. They had to be certified with a pulse. The rest were preferences.
I have said this many times to many potential refs - to ref HS JV games in eastern CT, you need to be able to walk briskly and blow a whistle at the same time and be there at 3pm on Tuesday. That's it. No certification. No soccer knowledge required. For this, we will pay you $67 for a dual and hopefully your partner knows enough to teach you a few things.
I am in the process of assigning the largest youth tournament in CT. Last year, we had about 325 games in 2 days. This year, it has exploded to over 525 games. I have about 200 refs signed up. At least 30 of them are 13 yrs old's who have never reffed a game - ever. Granted they are only getting U9/U10 ARs ($20 for a 50 minute game), but it still bothers me that clubs are paying good money and will be getting kids who need to be told/shown what the 2nd to last defender is, and not to move up past the mid field line. But I don't really have a choice - I still have 200 open spots to fill. 3 refs on every single game is the goal. And hopefully after they ref 10 games in 2 days, they will have a couple of clues. I will employ as many mentors as I can get, but the shortage means that most of those mentors are off working EDP games at $100+ a game.
No offense to the job you are doing on that tournament but $20 for a line is the reason you don’t have referees. How much does it cost for a team to enter?
No tournament around here has ARs for U9's / U10s. That's a bit crazy to me to have that. U11/U12 is just about overkill for 3 men. U9/U10? That's crazy!
Yeah. Tourney ball gets a solo from me on any small sided ball. Frankly in a tourney you might get a solo on a full field if things were stretched or if I had someone go down with an injury. Regular season club games anything U12 and below is a solo unless is a slow day with extra refs. Ironically rec games are more likely to get 3 on small sided games, mainly because that’s where I start new refs.
$20 doesn’t seem so bad for a 13 year old who has never reffed. Whether they add much seems another question.
It's not that bad for us old guys who AR and help pay it forward mentoring 15 year old first time centers.
With a thread titled "Referee Shortages...", I'm a little shocked that anyone would think that $20 would be sufficient, regardless of the age of the referee. If we can't agree that $20 for an AR for a 50 minute game is a farce, then what is the purpose of this thread, even taking consideration it's a small-sided field and not needed there? Some of the 13 year olds being assigned into this tournament may be "green", but they still have expenses. Just like us, they still need to buy their OSI jerseys, shorts, socks, whistles, flags, certification fees, etc. Even if @DefRef assigns these kids 5 games, they're still not breaking even. Yes, I'm aware that many of these kids fizzle out by the time they get to high school or college. Perhaps if we treat them with respect with a decent fee, more might stay. They are there to do a job, not to be a volunteer. I'd rather give $40 to a kid who has potential for a 50 minute game for tournaments that clubs make a lot of money on, than someone in their late 60's who is most likely barely moving.
Rates here are all over the place. The community travel clubs each set their own rates. I've been successful keeping mine juicy for this market, as of last fall I do: U10 45/30 U12 50/35 U14 60/40 U16+ 75/50 We hosted a U10 tourney last November and paid $55 for solos. That let me fill four fields with quality refs for two days. For competitive club PA-West games (not the alpha-hysteric multi-state stuff) they are: U10 30 solo U12 50/40 U14 70/45 U16+ 80/50 I still don't get why my State uses a solo ref for Cup/Classic U10 and wants us to use trios for travel. In practice a lot of those travel U10s wind up solos, and as I've said before U10 is no longer a great training ground owing to the build-out line--it's a mutation rather than a predecessor, in my view.
Cost of living varies tremendously depending on where you live. $20 is good pay some places and unreasonable other places. Personally, I don't think U9/U10/U11/U12 should have ARs at all, but that could be an entire thread on it's own.
There are some sorts of U11/12 games where ARs are good to have. If they’re decent enough, they add some value to the quality of officiating on some of the more competitive, higher-skill games. And on the opposite side of things, at the recreational level it’s a good place for young refs to start out, rather than having to take a whistle right away or having to AR mouthy teenagers.
The full crew on a small sided game topic is a tough balance. On the one hand, of course an experienced ref can handle one solo no problem. Earlier in March I did 3 u12 solos since they were close to me. After One game a parent asked me at the end if I do MLS next with their club because they need refs as good as me. The assignor who was a former national ref asked me why I was doing this level of game, I said $60 for walking around for an hour. And he asked my assistance about what I feel like should be solo vs full crew games On the other, you need small sided games for new refs to learn the game on as ARs. Putting a new ref right onto an AR on an 11v11 on a regular sized field is not good, I know firsthand. And even u9-12, having a new ref solo on them with no backup is a recipe for disaster. So it’s really not fair to say to have them all be solos just because since we’re experienced we don’t see a need to have ARs on them. Really from a game management standpoint (not counting offside) all youth games would probably be fine being solo, but in practice we don’t do that.