Our state rule is that officials are to leave the site IMMEDIATELY at the conclusion of the game. Basketball referees are out of sight almost before the final buzzer is turned off. Football referees of the gridiron variety waddle/pretend to jog off as soon as they do the 'hold up the ball' end of game thing. Soccer? Oh, I've got to change my shoes, get some water, on and on and on. I keep telling them every year, my bag is inside a black garbage bag, in case of rain. My jacket is on top of the bag, inside the garbage bag. My keys are in one pocket of my jacket and my cell phone is in the other. Pull on the jacket, pick up the bag and away I go. No 'nice game,' no handshakes, no waiting for the early reviews from the critics, no debrief with the crew, we are out of there. Or should be........
I understand this is what HS wants (at least in many/most states). But it makes me sad that "getting out of Dodge" has become such an expectation. It shouldn't be necessary.
I understand and agree that it "shouldn't" happen. But, in my experience and in the reported experience of referees in our state, it is the exception and not the rule that the athletic director or their deputy is present and offers to provide the post-game escort. At my high school, I have been the one designated to escort football officials to their cars after the game. In over a quarter of a century, not a single football referee crew has ever taken me up on it. In soccer, there have been numerous reports over the years of escorts not doing anything when the referees they were escorting were approached by disappointed parents. So the 'escorting' was, essentially, meaningless. The state association's rules do not provide any penalty for failing to offer an escort, other than, perhaps, a call to the principal from the state office when there has been an incident. All of that is above my pay grade.
I have only been harassed a handful of times in HS. Weirdly, it’s always been when I thought we had a really good game!!
If you can see my name, you can understand why I didn't like it a few years ago when one of the girls HS teams I officiated frequently has a player named Kat.
Our rule is to observe the post-game handshake line (pre-covid) then guidance emphatically says to depart as soon as practical. Most of us usually change shirts or cover-up, then depart. I've only been doing HS 3 yrs... there's a few times per season when one of us says, "Grab your gear and let's go before the parents can get to the parking lot", usually after a heated affair. So far, the worse has been hearing continued hollering at us from the stands as we walked out. A couple of our locals were actually confronted and verbally accosted last season, but nothing physical. Gotta love a couple of the semi-sunken stadiums in our coverage area in which we have to walk up through the lower-level bleachers to get out. Or fields with no other route to our cars than though the spectators' area. At times we've hung for a bit on the opposite touch line to let the crowd thin before exiting just to reduce opportunities for them to approach and say something stupid. A LEO is usually only present at the large schools or for certain rivalry games. Some AD's are often MIA by the end of the 2nd if they haven't left by halftime. I've only been offered an escort a handful of times, but those were after very calm games and weren't close to being needed. HOWEVER, I have had AD's at two different schools stop us as we were grabbing our gear to leave... "I know you guys came here straight from work and thought you'd might like something for the trip home... " and handed us each a box with hotdogs or pizza, chips, cookies, gatorade, etc. Yes, they were small rural schools after very low-key and low-skill games, but had very warm hospitality!
sorry, yes I know...but since I was heavily involved the author sent me the entire article as it would have been behind a paywall. There should be another Betty Ellis article to be published shorty. Today is her 40th anniversary of her NASL debut!!!
With four high school games in five days this week, including a substate boys quarterfinal center on Thursday and a conference championship girls center on Friday, I took the day off from officiating and was a dad watching my son play in his U13B tournament semifinal. I see the opposing team's coach and exchange the normal pleasantries. He then sees me in street clothes and asks, "Where's your uniform?" I explain my schedule for the week, and he says, "That's too bad. When I saw you, I was hoping you were officiating our game coming up. You're by far the best official we've had all season." Me: "(Coach), you do realize that my son's playing on the opposing team for this game, right??" Coach: "I know. I'd rather have you reffing your kid than anyone else we've had this season." Me: "Can you tell that to the coach of the team they played on Friday? That guy can't get over me even running a line for a game with my kid playing! " (Side note that this coach and I have had long-running history from when I refereed a U10 Saturday league game three years ago when his team played my son's team because we were short 25 referees for prom weekend. This guy has never gotten over it and makes a scene when this happens. His problem, not mine - especially since the first goal of the game was on my side of the field and I gave his team an "even is onside" call that led to a goal. This coach also recruited four ringers for this weekend's tournament and is the only person with an issue related to this situation, so the problem lies much more with him than it does with me.)
https://www.ussoccer.com/stories/2021/04/feature-she-ran-the-line SHE RAN THE LINE FORTY YEARS AGO, BETTY ELLIS WAS THE FIRST AMERICAN WOMAN TO OFFICIATE A MEN’S PROFESSIONAL MATCH
Did my first men's game today. Kept them from killing each other and got out of the game with only two yellows. I think I checked off quite a few boxes on the reffing men's league bingo card. One player from each team with no number? Check. Guy writhing in pain after getting touched on the back, then immediately bouncing back up as soon as his teammate passes him the ball? Check. Surprisingly we actually had 11 v 11 at the start of the game, which is more than I can say for the two games I AR'd today. 49 more centers and I can start thinking about upgrading to regional! (LOL who am I kidding. By the time I get there they'll have changed the requirements to something else.)
did you have the “player with a 3 digit number” or my fav “two players with the same number”. How about a player who changed out at the field after coming from somewhere not soccer related? Player having a cigarette at halftime? All of the above should be on your “Amateur Men’s Soccer league” bingo card.
Actually, yes. Grey’s 1st half keeper had the same number as an outfield player. Then grey swapped keepers at halftime and the new keeper had a plain white t-shirt—and also one of grey’s field players in a white t-shirt. The contrast was enough that the other team was okay with it, but obviously not ideal. In one of the games I AR’d today a player got sent off, then gave his jersey to a teammate, who made a “1” out of tape to add to the jersey number.
Today I CRed a youngers MLS Next game. Clear trip 1 yard into the box and penalty which I immediately call, probably 90% DOGSO yellow vs. no card. Players and coach clamoring that he was the last man Problem was that I looked away for a split second to point at the spot on my signal, and when I looked back there were 6-8 players all right at the spot of the foul as happens on fouls in the box, and I lost the player who committed the foul. Went over to my AR (regional) who was already at his correct spot, asked him if he saw which player did that trip, he missed it, I missed it. We both say "f***" to each other Team that got the PK still lost by a decent number of goals, and luckily we didn't get a bunch of crap from anyone. But we were definitely going to say, if we had to explain, that there was a defender goal side a step beyond the player who committed the foul, so it wasn't a DOGSO yellow, but it would have been an SPA PK so no card. Chalk another up to my list of dumb mistakes, looking away to point at the spot instead of focusing 100% on the challenge coming and recognizing who committed the foul before all else
Actually a good lesson for me regarding persistent infringement. Sometimes, I get so wrapped up in the next phase of play that I don't do a great job of identifying who committed the foul. If I would take an extra second or two to get a good look at the player who committed the foul, I would probably do a much, much better job of identifying issues related to PI.
This is one of my personal points for improvement this Fall in HS. On the better-skilled games, I realized that I often don't note players on simple fouls and thus can miss PI as the game progresses.
Or, Opposing coach: "That's 3 from that guy!!" Me to self: I think its just his second, but I guess I'll keep an eye on him.
The local women’s league (at least for the divisions I do) routinely has people on a given team wearing fairly random shirts of sort-of similar colors, typically without numbers. Back in the days of paper rosters, I would jot down the name of the bar or school or charity race or whatever in lieu of a number. And then there was the game in which I had to explain to the visitors that while the home team was officially wearing orange, the one yellow shirt counted as orange for that game. Colors of shorts? Do some teams actually have matching shorts? For one women’s game, I counted five different colors (the official color of black, as well as blue, red, yellow, and white). And the blacks came in three styles: plain, one side-stripe, and two side stripes. My favorite almost-matching shirt in a women’s game, probably 10 or more years ago: a visiting player somehow found a Curt Shilling Red Sox shirt in pink and sky blue colors that almost exactly matched the shirts of her teammates. For occasional youth teams with duplicate numbers, I’ve learned not to trust tape (to provide an initial or trailing 1) unless I have no alternative—tape comes off. In my games, shoe colors can be used surprisingly often to break ties with numbers. Player socks? Were I ever to rely on the color of socks to determine the direction of a restart, I’d be lost in most of my games.
Our main men's league, wisely, requires unique numbers for each player and tape is specifically prohibited, since it always comes off. Our co-ed league, however, does not require numbers on shirts. To make matters worse, they have a two goal limit per player, so the referees have to track who scored each goal, to avoid dealing with the cries of "that's their third goal, ref!!!' (and to be able to remind a player who has reached their two goal limit, since, at least half the time, the player has no idea that there is a limit.) This can lead to situations like one described to me by the referee: Two attackers on goal. One, with the ball, had already scored twice. Both defenders went to mark the open teammate, because they knew the guy with the ball had to pass! And, no, own goals don't count against your two!
My favorite is when it is the AD himself (never herself) abusing you on the way out. Girls playoff game a few years ago, I was AR2, home lost 4-0 and missed a penalty. The CR also decided not to RC home's keeper for DOGSO with ten minutes left. As we walked to the parking lot home's AD joined and whined "CR, all we ask is that you give us a chance."
If that ever happened to me, my first phone call on the way home would be to the state association for a full account. Let's just say the AD would be getting a very direct call from the state association.
We've got a layer of administration between us and the statewide association, but we all reported the incident and informed the local board that the home school was now on our personal "no" lists. To the point above about the AD who controls the crowd best is usually the best organized- this was also a school notorious for having refs show up at empty fields where there was no game, and also having teams at the field looking for officials that were never assigned to the game. Things have improved there since a change in AD.
I've probably already posted the story of the school where the AD was complaining about my decision to red card one of their players, for taking a swing at an opponent off the field, all of the way to the parking lot. It was his son. The assignor informed me that he had asked that I not do their games anymore. Yay! I was asked by several other referees how they could get on that list. And it's not exactly in the geographic center of the area we serve. That was the year that his school did not win a single varsity league contest in any sport, boys or girls. I think we're three or four AD's later now.