Games Cancelled, No Refs

The everlasting dillema. Trying to get more people into refereeing despite the abuse and lack of support some ref associations show.

 

“We can’t keep getting a year older,” said Friedman, who has refereed a handful of games himself in Taos and Los Alamos this year.

The alternative to not getting older is also fairly harsh.

But, getting back to the original discussion, our HS association is down numbers this year as well. Probably by 10 percent, and the age of those remaining keeps getting higher. We lose the young and middle guys all the time. Our association is being pro-active about it, and the Varsity fee is $81 per man in a dual.

Our local assignor a for USSF are struggling getting guys too. We have a few new people a year, but they then get completely overrun. The coaches, parents, players all contribute to an atmosphere that is downright vicious. I had matches this weekend with only one AR, and the surrounding fields had likewise only 1 AR. We used to have enough so you didn't have to do 5 matches a day.

 

@vetshak who is our state SDI wrote a paper a year or so ago discussing this issue in Minnesota. It's worth a read as I'm sure the problem is similar in other states.

https://www.minnesotasrc.com/assets/documents/MNSRCWhitePaper.pdf

 

Our high school numbers are up about 10% from last year. Our youth numbers, and youth do almost all of the fall sub-high school age games, are down a bit but I also believe that the number of games that youth referees are doing is down, which is just as much of a problem. The fall competitive youth league is covering about 89% of assignments. But it is better than when I started, many moons ago. I've done varsity boys' solo and the U-12, 13, 14 games were frequently solo or one AR. I don't have specific figures but it's my understanding that there is a bit of a dip in the number of kids in high school right now compared to the number in grade school/middle school. The implication is that there are more youth games and fewer people to referee them, even if there were no change in interest in refereeing.

 

There may be even fewer referees when the current restructuring at the grade 3/4/5/6 levels takes effect.
I have heard frightening things, and there will be a lot of very upset people.

PH

 

In my area there are a ton of referees, but in general the good ones don't want to do high school. Why? The biggest factor is because as much as high school referee associations like to say "we need younger referees", they still value experience over ability. So, the good games still go to the old guys who can't move and haven't learned anything new about the sport since 1995, and the young referees get the division-6 "I'm playing soccer so I don't have to do P.E." games, despite the fact that they may do higher-level adult amateur games on the weekends. High school pays better than just about any other level around here, but the good refs aren't doing it for the money. And until high school associations start doing a better job of respecting young talent, I think the referees will continue getting older and older.

 

Yes. My org is trying desperately to do this.

 

For the first time ever I had a game this fall, a tournament game, where I seriously considered never doing another tournament game.

I used to think that the only thing that would solve the referee shortage would be supply and demand: costs to play going up due to the need to pay referees more to show up, and the product getting worse due to more games with one or no referees.

Now I think that part of the solution would be harsher penalties for spectators empowering referees to toss them. For the younger referees this would have to be accompanied by increased volunteerism at the clubs to place field marshalls at games. This, I believe will never become widespread, because we as a culture are wandering away from volunteering our time, and, in particular, soccer clubs have become businesses that treat their "members" as customers, who pay more and demand more every year.

Who knows where we're headed. I am just thankful that at the typical game I might hear a "handball!" or two from the cheap seats along the touch line, or a "Come on!", because I didn't blow the whistle before the foul actually happened, but probably not much more than that.

 

I know there have been a number of higher level refs who have given up on things with the rollout of the program affecting everyone 6 and higher. However, any more details on how this will affect this particular topic would be welcomed.

 

No details, but if more referees quit, there will be fewer referees, no?

PH

 

Mostly effects the number of officials who can do adult amutuer games. From I have been told by several of my assignor friends not enough people choose to upgrade to grade 7 to compensate for those who have decided to quit. Also it is now mandatory to have at least a grade 7 crew. In previous years I have seen many adult leagues use grade 8s often youth referees as ar's. For many leagues this made the most sense for what they thought they wanted out of ar's. I know most states require their grade 7s to be at least age 17. Imho leagues and state associations have set unrealistic goals with their expectations in regards on how to get referees to facilitate those games. Actually not my opinion mostly the rant of those same assignors.

 

I know this is completely anecdotal, but I've never gotten more Friday night emails from assignors desperate for refs than I have this season in the DC/VA/MD area, especially for adult games. ..and there're no Grade 7 requirements here for adult games.

 

It's happening here too.

 

I have also seen a proliferation of leagues. There are some teams who are playing in two different leagues at the same time, leading to a match on both weekend days. I used to only do matches on Sunday but because of this I am doing youth matches on both days. Mostly solo on Saturdays and 2-3 man crews on Sunday.

Also, is there an economic factor here? When employment increases, does our participant rate go down?

 

There never has been an actual requirement that referees had to be grade 7 to do adult games. It was only a "recommended assignment level." (Exception, of course, for any local association/league/tournament standards.) Perhaps parallel, we require that high school playoff officials must be or have been USSF grade 8 or higher, even to be 4th official. USSF no longer has an age requirement for grade 7. Our SRC has chosen to make 14 the minimum, more pro forma than anything else, since we do require that anyone upgrading to 7 have at least five centers at U-17 or older. We did have a referee upgrade to 7 at 15 years of age, no fast tracking, no standards waived. My daughter was 17 when she upgraded to 7, which used to be the minimum USSF age.

USSF has significantly reduced the number of referees in grades 5 and 4 for 2016 (assuming all that were offered the badge will pass their physicals.) I believe the numbers are something like 400 down to 141. Rick Eddy has said that the numbers will continue to shrink for a while, although not that drastically. Nevertheless, I'm now seeing grade 6's who want to travel to Development Academy tournaments and adult regionals in order to be seen by National Assessors who are not from their state. There is a widespread impression that a passing assessment from the National Assessor(s) in your state is necessary but not sufficient for upgrade. Despite the drop in total numbers, one of my grade 5's was upgraded to 4 for next year. He had 20 assessments in 2015 by different National Assessors!

As a result, I'm getting a lot of pressure from ambitious referees to help them with the cost of cross country travel. I certainly don't have the money in our SRC budget to pay for all of that, or even much of that. What we have is prioritized to helping improve the much larger number of referees who do games in our youth and adult leagues. Some other states have different priorities.

 

Last year (2014) I took a high school certification course. One of the instructors told us that in 2009 when unemployment spiked the same class had a surge in numbers. One guy that year told him he knew nothing at all about soccer but heard you can get $75 for refereeing a varsity game, so that's what he was there to learn how to do.

 

USSF requires that the minimum grade that can assigned to an adult match be a grade 7 and recommends grade 6 for being the middle.

Ah I imagine the misconceptions probably come from this document. As far as competition rules go, i am not positive on whether it was a league rule or a state rule for everyone to be a grade 7. http://www.ussoccer.com/stories/2014/03/17/12/58/open-letter-to-referee-community

 

All I know is that Maryland was NOT happy about this.
Right now, the rule is that you can become an 7 without assessment or fitness test...if you wait for 5 years after declaring your intention to upgrade.
Not surprisingly, you can waive the 5 year wait by, you guessed it, passing an assessment and fitness test.
Pretty much giving the middle finger to USSF....which I respect, since I think what the USSF did to devalue the 7s was crazy.

 

The referee program used to in the hands of the National Referee Committee and its directors. They made the policies, and office staff in Chicago (prior to that in Colorado Springs) carried out the operations.
Now the policies and decisions are made by the employees in Chicago, some not ever having been referees, and the Referees' Committee does not seem to to do very much at all in regard to how the overall program is ran.

PH

 

Baseball does have that torturous path to The Show. IMHO, soccer is going the same way, but it's not there yet. MLB also starts with going to "umpire school," one of, I believe, two commercial schools lead by former or current umpires, after which you hope that someone saw you there and decided to give you a contract for single A, short season ball for a year. Then it's up or out, within a few years at each level. The attrition rate is over 90%, I hear. Those who get dropped sometimes go back and become top NCAA baseball umpires, so college games are for those who weren't good enough or who just didn't come along at a time when there were openings. Most of the new MLB umpires have already done quite a few MLB games as fill-ins, vacation replacements, etc. Compare that to soccer. I believe MLB umpires make over $200,000 a year.

The NFL is not full time guys, even during the season. The NBA is full timers. I don't know about the NHL. Interesting that both the NFL and NBA can grab people directly out of the college official ranks. No minor leagues, no certain experience required, etc. D1 college refs in basketball make enough to not need another income for the year, depending on whether they're satisfied with an income in high five figures.

MLS guys are making high $60's, low $70's, with benefits, certainly nowhere near what MLB, NBA, or NFL guys get. MLS, however, is still 'pre-profit.' Remember that MLS, unlike the other sports, is a single entity set up.

 

Was this meant to be in the work/referee conflict thread?

 

I get the desperate e-mails every day, including looking to cover games that same day. There is just an explosion of teams and leagues now. I guess it's good for the sport.

 

I'm not sure if it's a good thing I never got emails for games in USSF/Summer leagues, but I got emails looking for HS JV/V refs pretty much at least once a week, if not more.

 

I assign for a bunch of high schools, as well as an adult MBB league.

I try to assign games at least a month in advance. I had the high school season pretty much fully assigned by the end of July. It runs from mid-August to mid-October. The positive side of assigning early is that I can get people committed to schedules before the youth season schedules are out.

That said, I with about 250 games going on in a week, I am *going* to get some injury and work related turn-backs every week. It happens. I also had referees change jobs and no longer able to do afternoon games, and one referee get a kidney transplant and need to get pulled off the rest of the season.

So, despite my best intentions to not have tons of "Looking for coverage for the following games" eblasts, I still had at least one, if not more than one per week through the season.

Through the entire year, I had 4 games with 2 referees instead of 3. Two of those were no call/no shows, so I had the game filled, a ref who had accepted the game just didn't show up.

I also get at least a dozen emails per week from the USSF youth assignors begging for officials