I just got doing my first a WPSL game with a KO at 7:30pm and multiple weather delays and a 2 hour road trip. Ended with me being home at 2am. This was almost a bad story but my ARs were two Regional Referees. One was a Regional Ref Coach who went to Regionals in Murfreesboro as a Coach and the other went to President's Cup and was selected for Nationals after doing the U19G Final Southern President's Cup game in the center. These two referees gave me a detailed and thorough post-game debrief of things I did right, things I could work on and things to think about. It was an informal assessment on my first "big" game where I had a 4th. The game ended 2-2 with no KMIs missed but I still need to work on positioning and predicting and some mechanics. Didn't help I ate 5 hours before so my fitness wasn't best as I was feeling it but...what those two referees did for me.. It was a wealth of knowledge to take me into my next game and get to the next level.
The season is over. 8 weeks until HS soccer starts up. I will sit back and enjoy not hearing teenage boys yell "LETS GO!!" after each goal. Not sure why, but this is like nails on a chalk board to me.
I've never understood that saying in the context you describe. It makes me laugh every time and the smart ass in me responds with "where?"
My favorite is "0-0." I can sort of appreciate the sentiment behind it, but if it's 1-1, why do you need to say "0-0"?
i actually think it is a bad sentiment. While I get the caution about over confidence, the fact is that smart players don’t act like it is 0-0 when it isn’t.
Especially when it is 7-0. My first center at 7-0 the winning coach said "0-0. Keep pushing. Keep pressing." U10 boys.
I’ve always thought it sad in younger games when coaches are more interested in running up the score further than taking advantage of an opportunity to create different opportunities for players.
We have a mercy rule in high school. I have not kept any statistics on the number of matches that end before full time due to the mercy rule. However, it is a daily occurrence in the fall season and not just at sub varsity. I've coached on both sides of blow outs and neither experience is enjoyable. You almost always know in advance that a game is going to be lopsided. Maybe I'm giving coaches too much credit, but there are so many things the winning coach can do to gives the players the chance to continue playing a full game. The mercy rule is there to encourage coaches to do what's best for their players, rather than building the coach's ego.
when my daughter was playing AYSO 14U, they were in first or second place, and their last game of the season was against a team that had not only not won all year, they hadn’t even scored. At half time, it was the girls who conspired to set up a goal for the other team, and to make sure the other team didn’t know they gave it up. So much better than the games where there is a rule that a team gets punished for winning by too much and you see players yelling “don’t score,” which simply humiliates the other team more.
LET'S GO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! LET'S GO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! LET'S GO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! ZERO ZERO EVERYONE ZERO ZERO!!!!! It's like AI bots
My favorite mercy rule story happened this past spring. 7-0 at halftime. 10-0 is the mercy rule. #1 private school team came three hours to a military prep school. As the sun was setting, the lights came on. But one of the four bank of lights did not come on. I asked both coaches if they wanted to wait until the lights got corrected. The winning coach said "we have a three hour drive. We have enough sun." They scored three goals in the next five minutes.
Really? They couldn't find a creampuff that they could mercy less than a three hour drive away? Sheesh.
I don't know about this situation, but in my experience some leagues, especially smaller school leagues, are fairly spread out geographically and 'you go there or they come here' is required to play the league schedule. Almost every year it seems, we have a first round playoff game where one team has to travel about seven hours, each way, into a different time zone! (Yes, there are some parts of our state in a different time zone.)
This. It was a region game. Only eight teams in AISA AAA. It counted in the standings. To be fair, this team was so dominant, they could have stayed home, taken the forfeit and still have finished in 1st place. But I don't think they would have done that.
As a players/kid, at least once we called and forfeited against a team which was going to have to travel 90 minutes (not horrible) to play us and then have their 3rd string defenders score on us (based on other games against them earlier in the season). We were going to be down to 11 players if everyone who said they were making it actually did. The other team thanked us as apparently they'd recently travelled further to show up for a similar game and really didn't enjoy it.
At the World Track & Field Championships, our event had a television red hat that was a young woman who said that she was from Manchester. I immediately asked, without giving her any idea of my soccer involvement, "City or United?" "Well, my mother was City, but most of us...." as she rolls her eyes.
Had a match this week that was my first center assignment at a new level. Felt pretty decent at the final whistle and felt even better when the losing coach came up to the crew, shook our hands, and said we did a "fantastic job today." Proud feeling!
Guess who passed the Regional fitness test! Thank you to everyone on this board who gave me tips and advice. It really helped. The deep breathing helped. I paced both my walks and runs. I timed the whistle just after I entered and was even a bit early on the later stages! On Wednesday I will try Lane 3
Update: On Wednesday I failed Lane 3. I stopped after Lap 6 and it didn't help it was 92F (33 C). I hadn't been training long. I was bound to fail. I got distracted and ran too late and just didn't reach the walking area in time but I was also just depleted. Thursday rolls around. I go back to Lane 2 in 84F (albiet it just rained hard). I pass with flying colors. I was hitting the walking area early even on Lap 8. Lap 6 to 8 was hardest. By 9 I could taste victory. Lane 2 all the way. Not too bad! Real test is on Sunday.
Another Casio RFT-100 watch popped up on eBay. Was sitting on $15 for a week. I thought maybe I would miraculously get it for cheap, the only non-spintso watch that has a vibration alert stopwatch. Auction just ended 2 minutes ago. In the last 10 seconds of the listing, it jumped from $20 to $55. Warms my heart to see after decades that auction sniping still exists, just imagining us all now hovering over the eBay app on our phones wherever we are instead of having to make sure we were at home on the computer when an auction was ending. At this price might as well just go for a used Garmin Vivo 3 I guess
And then on a good eBay related note, I just got a 2 pack of the Maxquall V4 radios for $50 total and a ref friend who also has the 3 man set is buying the other one off me, so now we both now have a compete 4 set of radios for only $25 extra. Nice.
I think there was a thread devoted solely to finding this watch on Ebay a few years ago! I still have a mostly dead one and a half dead one that I will combine someday to bring back to life. When I do, I am going to frankenstein the black wristbands from the mostly dead one onto the watchface of the dark blue half-dead one. Great watches. (Mostly) RIP.
I've heard quite a few people talking about having dead ones of these. Last fall a kid was gonna give me the dead one he had until his dad stopped him, and just last weekend I saw another kid with one, said his dad gave it to him, and said he also had another one that died. Maybe I should just avoid it, especially since it's out of production, if anything ever goes wrong I'm probably paying a ton for any adjustments or repairs.
Got to help setup the presentation and meet Sandra Serafini and we talked about assigning during lunch. Her assigning for PRO and NWSL She's got some war stories.