Anyone else think this story continued: "And then the grandmother of the red-carded player confronted him in the buffet line on the cruise ship."
Our assignor gets paid by the league - he has a contract with the league. We get paid directly by schools, so he is not part of that - however, he will chase down the schools if we do not get paid. So he is an agent of the league, which is made up of all the schools.
haha...or waiting very patiently for the Sunday paper to arrive so that you can compare the up to date stats of your fave home-team players to the others playing around the league(s).
Year after year, we did an in-person draft at our commissioner's apartment in Spring Valley. He would compile the weekly stats via a weekly sports publication like Sporting News or USA Today's sports weekly. We'd receive a weekly postage mail report done on Lotus 123 every Friday with our weekly and cumulative team stats and standings for our league. In the meantime we'd be reading every box score checking our own players. It was a horrifying waste of human time that we should all look back and regret at the end of our lives.
It’s the University Interscholastic League, housed within the University of Texas and run by the schools. Votes are by superintendents and/or ADs. We have a union, TASO, but because it’s Texas they’d never call it that. I think the general feeling is that pointy ball gets most of the attention from both sides. Referee shortages across all sports have produced some improvements in pay, but I doubt they will ever change the rule on assigning fees.
It's my understanding that high school pointy ball in Texas pay the officials a percentage of the gate. I've heard that some games will pay each of the officials over $1,000.
Yep: But the gate would have to be over $120K to hit $1,000 per official. Not sure how many games hit that much for the gate. My old HS charged $7 per ticket (in the early 2000s) which would need 17K in attendance to get there.
When the state championship games are in Jerry World that’s very possible. And by “very” I mean they are definitely getting that kind of gross gate.
Here's a video of how they used to do the three whistle system in Colorado. The difference with PA is that they rotate who is in the center and who is on the sides.
When I first started (fall 1999), we had 8 high school referee association meetings per year, which was one every two weeks. At the end of the meeting, the assignor would pass out your schedule for the next two weeks. If you couldn't make the meeting, you had to get someone to pick up your schedule for you. If there were changes, the assignor would call you and hopefully get in touch before the game. Since this was the days before cellphones, that wasn't always the case. In the last few years before we got Arbiter, the state started to require schools and officials get their whole schedule prior to the season. At that point, the assignor started mailing us our entire schedule in the summer and calling when there were any changes.
Again, I may be wrong about this, but I believe I've read that there are high school stadiums in Texas that seat over 20,000.
Looks like there's two (with a number of others over 16,000): https://texasbob.com/stadium/cap_index.php
The then Burn spent their 2003 season playing at Dragon Stadium in Southlake. Current capacity only 11k! Figured it would be more.
Nope, no assigning fees in Orange, Ulster, or Dutchess (Sec 9, Sec 1)...now, NCAA assignors around here...different story.
Again, this is only my second year as a HS referee as I’ve been a long-time USSF referee. Here is another example of the “culture” of HS soccer where I shake my head. I don’t know if this is state specific or this how folks act nationally: Two of the top teams in our County played yesterday as this was originally scheduled to be a dual and changed to a 3-man system as I was moved from another game to this one as a CR. This appeared to ruffle feathers with one of the assigned AR’s. I sent one AR a polite email that the system showed that he did not yet accept or decline his assignment in the system. No response. I sent a polite text message in the morning to both of my partners that I would be arriving 30 minutes early to do my warm-up routine and asked if they could come at least 10 minutes before to do a pre-game since it was my first time working with them and it was not the traditional dual system. One AR texted back immediately and the other guy ignored this message as well. Both teams are there well before kickoff and the only guy preventing the game from starting on time is this guy, who purposely came late and comes walking in at what should have been the opening whistle. Didn’t even say “hello”. When I tried to make a joke if his phone wasn’t working to break the ice, he began to yell “Don’t lecture me as I’ve been a referee for 35 years! Your emails and texts are stupid!” “I can’t tell if your comment was a joke since I don’t know you!” My favorite was, “I’m going to teach you something….you’re supposed to wait for us in the parking lot and we come in together as a team”. This is NOT true and a myth that some of the older high school referees who do multi-sports preach. AR mechanics were awful. Had to overrule on a corner kick/goal kick decision that was egregiously wrong in the first 2 minutes and no one argued. Lifts his flag for offside, even though the shot is heading for the crossbar and the “offside” player is not involved in the play. Had to wave him down. I could go go on and on with examples. In USSF matches, I love working with new guys, meeting new folks and joking around as if I’ve known them forever. In this cozy group of mid-to-late 60’s guys in high school matches, it’s a closed fraternity for them where anything other than what they know (coming a few minutes early for a pre-game, answering texts, etc) is insulting.
Sounds to me like a particularly virulent strain of the "HS Ref" bug that we probably all experience to some degree. Myself I can't imagine trying to learn offside with HS kids as lab rats, but it makes sense the application would vary widely from what we see in USSF matches. The crusty "we always do X" is familiar too. In my 10+ years doing HS I've come to see it as more like the Articles of Confederation than the Constitution. Sovereignty, dammit! In cases where you're able and it's not too burdensome, you might be able to save yourself a little grief by sussing out what "we've always done" and do it that way, even if it seems bonkers. Not saying go back to contested drop balls, but it sounds like you're in a robust guys-who-ref-HS-soccer culture. I've found it useful to pick some battles, ignore others, and find such camaraderie as exists. YMMV.
While high school soccer officiating is different from USSF, your AR seems to just be a jerk. I have never had a problem contacting by partners or a problem with partners arriving late. In my area, it's pretty standard to arrive 30 minutes before kick off.
I will tell this to anyone else who doesn’t referee other high school sports: EVERY high school sport deals with the same issues of the referees being old guys, and therefore more likely to be jackasses like metro’s guy. I thought it was only in soccer. But after moving to a few other sports, this is widespread. I think it’s the effect of having high school sports that start between 3-4 pm and it’s mostly older guys who are retired or get off work and can do those games. And since most referees are men, you end up with older men. And with older men comes mostly overweight, out of shape men. And with older men comes the typical “my way or the highway” and “back in my day” personality you expect from older men in their 50s and 60s. I’m sure these least few sentences will trigger some posters here but it’s true. That’s why @MetroFever you have better experiences with USSF refs who are usually doing these games on weekends. I have the same with doing youth games on weekends in my other sports. There is a better variety of demographics of referees who are available on weekends vs. high school weekday afternoons. And I’ve also noticed there are a decent contingent who only referee one or the other. People who want their weekends open so they only referee high school (usually the old guys), and those who want their weeknights open so they only ref weekends (usually the wider referee base).
This is why HS soccer has not changed since I was a player, which was quite a while ago. This demographic is resistant to ANY positive change and this is all they know. Because the assigning platform would occasionally have incorrect information (field or time), the HS assignors requested that we send out an email the day to the AD before confirming all of the information. When I did that the first week, the other guy took offense and said he was embarrassed and already knew where the home school always play their home games. He TOTALLY misunderstood the purpose of why we were reaching out. This is something we already do at the club level. Last night, my 70 year old partner insisted on parking in a nearby mall instead of utilizing a parking placard the Athletic Director provided (at my request) so they we didn't get ticketed since the facility had no parking lot. My spot was right in front of the field. His response to not accepting the nice parking spot and walking a few walks away to a private lot was "I've been parking there for MANY years and have never been towed".