Well I think this weekend was a pretty big success, for the 8.5 MLSN scrimmage solo games I ended up doing (but paid for 9.5 after the U19s rescheduled their Saturday morning game on Thursday without telling the referees). I didn’t get much criticism about my calls and being an Ironman lended me well to the hosting club’s technical director, and yes I actually do stay with play for all of them, not reffing from the circle of excellence. Then again, with these being scrimmages, how mad are people really going to get? But I think I can also say with some certainty that I probably had one of if not the most financially lucrative weekends a youth soccer referee has ever had.
I had a busy weekend. Temps both days topping out in the 100 range. Saturday morning, men's O-65, the men's league's summer tournament. Smaller field, but bigger than they are used to. One of the players before the game, is telling his teammates, "These guys are BRUTAL! They run the lines." Turns out what was 'brutal' about them was they had had some guys who could actually make runs down the touchline and then cross it in the middle. Saturday afternoon, NAIA women hosting a D3 women's team. I'm AR2. The game was an hour away from the first game. Beautiful new turf field. We took water breaks, of course. I don't know about you, but I find that AR assignments are tougher on my legs than centers. Easy win for the D3 college. And today, Sunday, I had the same D3 college, this time with them at home, this time with me in the center against another NAIA school. Sheesh. You'd think that by the time they get to college, the players would not still be doing that "If I kick the ball hard enough, the legs of the two defenders who are two feet away from me will suddenly dissolve" thing. We did six throw-ins for the visiting team in the first 30 seconds of the game, all in front of the home team's bench. And then, about four minutes into the game, the PA announcer says my name. This school's layout is that the announcer and clock operator are up in the booth, with a student at the field level table on a walkie talkie. It turned out that the home coach asked the student what my name was. She radiod to the announcer, who pushed the microphone button instead of the walkie talkie button. I heard my name and I'm thinking "Is there something wrong? Am I supposed to stop the game or something?" When I didn't hear anything else, we just played on. Home team won 1-0, on a penalty kick that Stevie Wonder could have called.
This has always been the case for me, and pretty sure the same for pretty much everyone. AR has a lot of lateral movement which can cause a lot of fatigue in your groin/adductors, and then the constant sprinting, stopping, jamming your leg into the ground on the first stride of a sprint, it's way more taxing on legs that free roaming centering, at least in my opinion. And there's also a difference with turf vs. grass fields and the condition of the grass. A nice well manicured grass field is usually much softer and easier than a crappily maintained one, and turf is frequently the hardest on most people. Of course if you do too many assignments your legs will be very fatigued anyway (like me today, after doing 8.5 solo scrimmages this weekend)
There's also the 'fan zone' and coaching zone factor. Do you have a proper field where they are separated or do they continue to encroach making you have to adjust a run or 'accidentally' just run them over?
This actually goes well with a story from my Friday night game. The coach for the team behind me regularly had his heals on the touch line for most of the game. Late in the second half, an attacker pushes the ball past a defender down the line. The attacker tries to run past the defender, but the defender turns to run, stepping in front of the attacker running the attacker off the field, right at me. I turn, but the coach is only a few yards down so I can't run wide to avoid the players that are now running right at me. In an instant, I slow down stepping onto the field letting the players pass between me and the coach, and take off after them. You know what you don't want to do, give professional men a 5 yard head start... I'll see if I can find it tonight.
I've never taken that into account on the topic of the stress on your legs as AR vs a CR. I really don't think it happens often enough to be a significant factor. I more just look at the style of running you're doing in both roles, and in my experience, AR has much more repetitive, sudden, jerky, and somewhat awkward movements that lends itself to more stress on your legs than CR which allows you to do a much more natural running pattern that, even if you're putting on more distance in a match than an AR, it might not feel as such. I've even had experiences in the past where a referee on our crew is having some discomfort in his (usually) knees, and he and we decide that he should be the center because it will allow him more natural movements and stress his knee less. The running differences are another reason why I prefer CR so much more than AR (along with just generally getting bored as an AR). This weekend getting to solo so many pretty high level youth scrimmages is honestly probably one of the more enjoyable experiences I've had as a soccer referee in a long time. Usually doing higher level letter league youth games, we get that three person CR-AR-AR crew rotation so I spend a few games pretty bored. Getting to just be out there alone for almost 9 games, not having to be an AR, knowing that every game is going to be called pretty consistently the entire time (such a ridiculous amount of hand checking, pushing, pulling, holding, grabbing action in MLS Next that I was having to decide on the fly on practically every possession what I'm going to allow and what I'm not), keeping a dialogue with players and coaches... sure the lack of camaraderie with a crew was unfortunate, but I think it was a good trade off.
The end result of this weekend, along with an additional $62.50 from a second half scrimmage I did. Thank you MLS Next!
C'mon, it's an honor to be one of 8,000 referees who were invited....you're also forgetting the free food!
First Varsity HS game of the season. Field is regular size. Penalty/goal boxes and center circle are marked for a U-10/U-12 sized field. Good start.
Right, at least with your two games a day you might get evaluated by some people when you have no goal to become a National though Had a similar awkward situation with my scrimmages this weekend. MLS next has u13s on a smaller field, so they moved the goals to the 6y goal box line but the penalty areas (artificial turf football field) stayed the same. Had a penalty kick. Can’t put it on the PK mark because it’s only 6 yards from goal. So it goes to the top of the penalty area because that’s 12 yards. So the rest of the players need to be 6 yards behind that. Took me about 30 seconds to process all that, but the football hash marks helped. Oh, and the end line was now just a few cones, so I had to try to call ball OOP for GK/CK solo without an actual line to look at
I eased my way into the swing of things with my first games since May, a pair of U14 travel games as AR. The center in the first game gathered captains AND goalkeepers to apprise them of the 8-second law, which seemed like a good idea. He also gave someone a yellow card for either PI or delaying a restart -- he crept up a few yards on a throw-in, then moved the corner flag before taking a corner. The latter is a pet peeve of mine, but yellow? This was a travel tournament in which we don't know team names ahead of time, and I unfortunately was working a game involving my town's club, which runs the rec league in which I do most of my work. I got to the parents' sideline to start the game and immediately heard, "Hey Beau," from a parent who volunteers a lot at the school library where I'm often the substitute librarian. Also near my sideline, a player from the other team was manhandling a kid that I know pretty well -- his older sister is a track star in high school, and he was clearly a few steps faster than the big dude trying to mark him -- and I was relieved when the center finally saw it and showed yellow without me needing to call attention to it. But the part of this thread with which I empathize the most is the toll an AR shift can take on your legs. In the second game, I spent about 15 minutes just standing at midfield while one team kept the other pinned back. Finally, they broke free and streaked up the field, and I had a tough time getting my legs to spring back to life.
Non referee rant (well, it is a referee rant when I am assigned one of these games) - I've been screaming for YEARS that 90-95% of U-14 games need to be played on smaller 'full' fields.
I think this would be a great idea for any referee, especially for youth teams, to let both the captain AND GKs know about the new rule, this way there is no confusion.
I got that email and rolled my eyes a little bit. Then I started to think a little bit more about how completely insane it is: 12 days of attendance is highly encouraged? In December? Clearly it seems aimed at adult refs (although it seems U18 refs are permitted; I don't know what the actual numbers are like). Most college students are busy with exams. And a lot of businesses have a year-end rush--certainly anybody working in retail would have trouble taking time off then. And millions of people are traveling around Christmas/New Year's to visit family, making it even harder to take time off a few weeks before Christmas. Not to mention I don't know how the players are taking time off high school when they probably have exams. I don't feel the need to rehash all the arguments about refs having to suck it up and do stuff like this for "exposure" to move up in the world, but the timing of this just seems crazy to me. Nevertheless, I'm sure the organizers have their reasons and the $$$ works out.
Yeah, it was really quite weird to me the time when they're holding the tournament. But it must be a yearly thing, and it must not be an issue to get teams and refs to attend, otherwise they wouldn't do it at that time With respect to the length that the tournament is, you're probably just talking about it being in December, but another sport I referee had its national youth championships from July 19-27 (first half was boys, day break in between, then girls second half) and pretty much all refs who attended were there for the entire thing, which included getting there the day before. I was surprised so many people take off 10 days to do the event
HS has been going for a couple of weeks now. Did a triple-header last night, JVB, JVA, Varsity. In the JVB game, we had more foul throws (8) than goals (7), than fouls (5). Since I call about 1 foul throw/year, I'm pretty sure I've never seen anything like it. I called two, one for a basketball-style chest pass, and one for taking the throw from at least 4 yards onto the field (if I can catch them before the throw, I can fix that, but the throw was taken before I could stop him). My duel partner called the other 6, mostly for jump passes.
And on the "things we see in early season HS games" thought, did a Varsity CR between two medium-sized schools. We're in the flow of play, I have a throw in, and AR1 is rushing onto the field waving his flag like a madman. Apparently, in the last substitution, the home team sent 3 on and took 4 off, so they were playing with 10. When the coach realized the mistake, rather than sending someone up, he grabbed a player off the bench and quite literally threw him on the field. So that's the second "E" caution of my career, spanning umpty-jillion games/matches. The PA announcer came on and said something like "In High School, the player must be invited onto the field by the referee. Jimmy came on without being invited, so he gets a caution"