It doesn't look like NFHS is making major changes to its high school rules. https://nfhs.org/articles/revisions-made-in-fouls-and-misconduct-rule-in-high-school-soccer/
"Coaches, will your players be properly and legally equipped?" "Yes." "That's great to hear!" Big change to the referee's jurisdiction regarding socks.
I don’t even want to know what their DOGSO considerations used to be if they’re just now clarifying that if any of the 4 Ds are missing that it’s SPA not DOGSO when this is always what we’ve done. And their overly wordy definition of SPA instead of just saying “time space and options” NFHS really sucks
I know the author of the revised rule 12. It was the committee's intention to make rule 12 more easily understandable, particularly for referees who only do high school soccer. There was no intention to change the requirements for DOGSO or SPA. So I will withhold judgment until I see the actual text.
Up until a year or so ago, i didn't even realize the considerations (4-D's) for DOGSO were not actually in the NFHS rulebook... I was presenting DOGSO video clips/analysis in a local HS association meeting when I figured out why a number of the non-USSF referees had never heard of them. As mentioned above, the considerations were not in the NFHS rulebook. If recent NFHS rule changes history repeats itself, I suspect they will be quite close to IFAB's if not verbatim. EDIT: Disregard, I'm an idiot. NFHS added the D's last year.
It won’t for other people, but it really still is surprising to me that there are people who referee games but aren’t USSF certified and only do HS and college. College I can understand, but people refereeing youth players in high school but not also refereeing regular youth club leagues is just strange to me. I guess a big reason can be the scheduling difference of weekday night games vs weekend games if people don’t want to spend their weekends officiating but still
I knew a guy who was a "high school sports official". I think he did volleyball in the fall and basketball in the winter, but he wanted to pick up a spring sport. He chose soccer. He didn't know anything about the game, but how hard could it be? He found out.
Ironically soccer is actually probably the easiest sport to get into even if you know nothing about it. Rule book outside of offside and handball is pretty straightforward and concise, fouls on their own are pretty simple to understand
Indeed. I had a friend who became a high school baseball umpire. When he signed up, they gave him a rule book to read and said "We'll try to put you on the bases for your first game." That was the extent of his training. What's the ruling if a pitched ball hits a bird before the ball reaches home plate? And I think the infield fly rule is baseball's equivalent of offside. At least half of the people who think they understand it can't explain it. And, for track & field, we have four rule books, not three, with extensive exceptions in one of them for both "masters" (i.e. older adults) and 'youth' events, on top of separate rule sections in each book for each of 17 events, plus things like race walking, long distance running, mountain running and elaborate event specific rules for 'para-athletes,' who are classified into a bewildering variety of categories, depending on their disability. I'm told that some of the para-athletes try to cheat by getting classified as more disabled than they really are.
Yeah track has a lot of different events to track but that's even beyond what I'm talking about. I'm talking just strictly about the basic rules of the sport. Picking up a few other sports and seeing all the fouls and restarts in those sports showed me how simple soccer is. Hell, even the fact that soccer doesn't have to deal with unaffiliated people controlling a shot clock or recording game stats on its own makes soccer much easier. Someone call Shane Gillis
Socks below the ankle? Aren't those mostly covered by the cleats? Really glad I don't have to spend time worrying about this now. The obsession with the uniform stuff is beyond me.
When DS was a senior, a couple of his HS teammates did the thing where they cut the bottoms off the colored socks, wore white "footies", then put the colored socks over it. There was maybe 1/2" of white between the bottom of the colored socks and the top of the cleats. The last game of the season (Regional tournament), CR said "that's not acceptable" and they had to scramble to find complete colored socks. This was 2021.
Are sliced up socks not a thing across the country? We had a bunch of kids taking razor blades to their socks. last year. Another thing not to worry about. I actually saw cut socks in the EPL a few weeks back.
We have had that as well here in PA and we had so much crap to deal because of NFHS rules. It makes me very happy to not have to worry about it going forward
That's ridiculous, the sock thing is normal because of foot part of socks getting worn out. Do the same thing with referee socks, buy a 6 pack of black crew socks then when your referee sock foot wears out, cut it off and pull the calf portion over the crew sock. NFHS is always a joke.
this is exactly what I do with my ref socks. But at least im smart enough to wear black socks underneath.
Yeah I’ve converted a number of refs I know to doing this. Once you buy the one pair of OSI socks and then a 6 pack of black crew socks for the same price as one OSI pair, you’ll never need to buy ref socks again. And the calf-only ref sock doesn’t get all nasty like the regular socks do either
I've asked OSI customer service if they will begin selling sock sleeves like player kit providers have been selling. Yeah, no intention at this time. While I sort of admire this little shop vs. all the other large suppliers. They move at mom & pop store speed.
I appreciate OSI being a mom and pop company but I don’t really appreciate the quality and tactics of a lot of their manufacturing so I try to buy from them as little as I can. Yeah I see players cutting holes in the calf portions of their socks, I don’t understand the purpose.