My Hofstra-bound daughter graduated Tuesday. Weather was perfect. Nice trade for the Sunday games I reffed in the cold.
I'm out East visiting family and went to watch my nephew play a U8 rec game this morning. Of course his is the only game at the complex without a ref. We drove out here and I have a whistle in the car so I do the game in what I have, a grey T-shirt and sandals. Good thing he's only 8 those things were difficult to run in.
Routine U-11 game today, though the players didn't seem particularly interested in exerting themselves in the heat. The one interesting thing about it was that I needed to remember not to use the flag to swat away cicadas.
Two items for me this week, one personal and one not. The personal item - my son made his officiating debut doing two U10 7v7 games on Saturday. He was definitely nervous in the first game, but called an advantage that led to a goal. Our state's manager of referee services for Iowa Soccer talked to him after the first game and just told him to have fun and not look so serious. His second game was a LOT better. He did very well for his first two games, and he seemed to have a lot of fun. On the non-personal side, Iowa had an all-female crew offciate our 1A (smallest school) boys state championship game on Saturday. I've worked with three of the four officials on the crew, and I can tell you it was absolutely no publicity stunt. They are all excellent referees, full stop. https://www.wqad.com/video/sports/f...ment/526-d2214933-c1db-477a-9985-243e26c48293
Kentucky State Cup final girls U18 We end 90 minutes tied 2-2. We end extra time with one team winning 7-4. That’s right, there were 7 goals in extra time. One of the craziest games I have ever been involved in.
Sorry, couldn't get any names/numbers from the coaches. I can check with my assignor since we get a lot of guys that go to school out there and sometimes end up working
89 degrees, 60% Humidity Left my house at 8:30. -Played 60 minutes of my O-40 match at Center D and Center Mid, before having to go ref -3 MLS Next matches, on turf, in full sun. First 2 were AR's, Final match was center of U-15. Funny enough, the 2 AR's were way worse than the final CR. Consumed 84 oz of water, 64 oz of Gatorade, 12 oz of Coca Cola, 1 PB&J sandwich, 1 Gu Gel, 3 mini stroop waffles and still lost 5.5 lbs for the day when I got home at 6pm. DVR'ed the US match. No way I was going to make it.
Reminds me of when I was coaching U-8 rec. Both coaches served as supervisors/referees during the game. I think there was a roving referee for 4 games, but things were pretty chill. I always tried to keep the hovering to a minumum, and just let them have fun during the games. I'll never forget one time the play was down at my end and I was trying to stay out of the way and be relaxed.. I find myself leaning against the goal post with my arm raised above my head, looking like a proverbial hoodlum killing time on Friday night leaning against a lamp post. The thought crossed my mind that my players' parents might see me and think they are not getting their money's worth of coaching skills from one with such a lackadaisaical attitude. So, I quickly slid my arm down and tried to look more engaged. Coaching U-8 rec; the good ol' days.
I find this a bit concerning. I think you didn't consume nearly enough calories to keep your body from starting to eat itself. I'm impressed that you're still standing. I'd guess there is less than 1500 calories there. Even on slow ARs I burn 400 calories and centers are 600. This year I've figured out how difficult it is to keep up with the calories burned while doing a full day of reffing. The best shortcut I've found is trail mix or mixed nuts. On busy days I will eat 4 meals plus snacks.
I'm semi-used to this, I often ride bikes for 3-4 hours. Had I felt the bonk coming on, I would have grabbed some more calories. I did had a large bowl of oatmeal with peanut butter and a few other calorie enhancers about 45 minutes before I left my house. There is a famous Bill Nye-attributed quote: "There’s no machine known that is more efficient than a human on a bicycle, Bowl of oatmeal, 30 miles -- you can’t come close to that." I did forget to bring with me a banana. ordinarily I'd try to eat a cliff bar or two as well. It was just too hot. Almost felt like the bars would be more distress on the stomach than the benefit of the calories. If I had to turn around and do this again today, yes, I'd probably gone for a few more calories, but it was only one day, so I'll catch up on the deficiency over the next day or so. Legs were a bit heavy this morning box jumping at 6am workout.
If nothing else, this is going to motivate me to work out more. We have to be pretty close to the same age if you're playing O-40, and I can tell you that the day after a day like that would be a major day of recovery (i.e., I'm not doing anything except maybe an arm workout).
I'm 53. I force myself after a hard day to show up to the gym (or go for a bike ride) just to keep moving. It sucks, but the warming up plus some advil gets the aches worked out a bit. Going straight to rest the soreness is awful. I'll get the rest day a couple days later.
It's easier to stay in shape than to get in shape. I'm old enough to be your father and I've found that my fitness level decreases during the fall soccer season, compared to where I am the rest of the year. I've decided that, this year, if I have one easy high school game on a day, I need to also go for a run in the morning.
Follow up with State Cup day #2. My center is a U20 boys that is testy. One team has 12 players (blue), the other team has 19 players (white) and has scratched one to meet the roster requirements. Blue scores in the second minute and starts S**thousing right away. Around the 5th minute, the blue keeper is dribbling to the corner of the PA to pick up the ball and kill time for the second time already. This time a white attacker runs at him and slides in as the keeper picks up the ball and jumps out of the way. Alarms are ringing in my head and I hit the whistle hard, go running in and take a big part of white's butt away with my yelling. I turn and go to the keeper and say, "Pick the ball up earlier. If he comes in and gets you, he's done for the weekend but if your leg is broken, you're done for the summer." Wouldn't you know, the keeper picked the ball up with an attacker at least 10 yards away for the rest of the game. Late in the first half, with the score 1-1, a white player is dribbling out of his defensive 1/3 just to the left of AR2 and gets clobbered by a blue player. Only problem is that I didn't see the nature of the contact, just that it was hard. The white player is down on the ground, single out the blue player and perp walk him 10 yards away from the foul (only 2-3 steps for me). Blue is still down so I jog over see he is really in pain and call for the coach. I stare at AR2 for 1 second and he just looks back, guess I'm on my own. I walk back to the blue player and say something like, "It is reckless. You didn't get the ball and you've gone through his knee. I need you to be smarter with the challenges." Then I showed a yellow. Blue had some minor complaints that focused around how tall the other guy was and so you had to go in high. It was a very confusing argument. After the game in our debrief I asked AR2 what he had seen and he said he was screened but he thought I got the decision right. He also said that a teammate from white really wanted to come complain to me but because I'd walked away and was lecturing the blue player that resulted in a yellow, he didn't approach. I'm not positive that I've ever done a perp walk like that, let alone one that apparently worked so well.
You could have had the other U20B middle going on at the same time. THAT one was testy. Yours was just a little yippie.
So....I can't get any kid to center the U9B comp/travel game tonight and only got 1 newbie AR (who won't take the center, even though I flashed the $40 at him), so I decide to do it myself. The kids are so small, but some are reasonably talented. Hey, I can still run faster than these guys, alright! I remember that I need to get them back behind the build out line, but forgot that there is no offside if they are mid field side of the line. On the first play up the field to the side with no AR, there is a kid standing at the line who looks like he is 20 yds offside and of course I call it. And it does not even dawn on me that I am wrong as I am wondering what the heck is wrong with the coach (who used to be my asst coach) that she is letting him hang out up there. Then about 5 minutes later, it just pops into my head that, oh yeah, that is allowed. I don't like the tactic (totally against the spirit of the BOL), but gotta know and call the rules. So another variable of the BOL is that goalies can't punt. But they can drop kick. And of course the same team is doing that repeatedly. Screw the spirit, huh. The kid is so slow at it, but generally gets off a good kick, but occasionally shanks one. It was funny how the other team kept telling each other, he's gonna drop kick it and running up to the line, only to have him kick it over their heads. And then I did another screwup. Goalie barely kicks it and it goes about 2 feet and then he run out and kicks it again. And I brain fart and call him for a double touch. No idea why I went there and it came to me about 3 seconds after I let the other team take the indirect kick, which of course lead to a goal. And then we had one of the funniest things I have seen in a while. These kids fall down all the time and had a few dangerous plays as they keep trying to kick the ball in the middle of the scrum. So we have an indirect kick. The plan is for the (much) lesser talented kid to run over the ball and touch/move it and the big leg boy to blast it. So the little guy runs up and jumps over the ball and attempts to reach down with his foot and totally misses the ball. So he is a little embarrassed and he backs it up and tries it again - with the same result. Now everyone is chuckling and he does not know what to do. And neither do I - they are not time wasting on purpose! Finally he just kicks it forward a few yards and no one from the defense comes after it and big leg runs up and starts dribbling and gets about 10 yards closer and blasts it off the post. No one said a word about any of my screwups (that I heard) and only a few groans when I gave throw-ins to the wrong team. Which we all know does not matter as they will either do an illegal throw (had 5-6 of them bad enough to call and many I did not - coaches asked me to call them) or throw it to other team. Based on the newbie AR, their normal refs probably make a few dozen mistakes and, hey, at least I was running! So then I took my $40 and bought a couple of steaks and grilled them up and only slightly overcooked them.
When I lived in Becket Ma I got a desperate call asking if I could do a travel team U12 match in Canaan Ct. Sure...why not. I doubt it paid $40 and was an 80 mi r/t. I did a fantastic job except for forgetting to return their passes!
The states I work U9 & U10 kept the drop kick for one year. Now they can't drop kick either. The first week drop kicks were banned, a coach taught his players a two-player drop kick. The keeper makes the save, bounces the ball, and another player would boot it downfield. Gotta love coaches who teach skirting the rules instead of fundamentals.