I've always used the term 'HS official', as in they are a two or three season sports official and in the fall it happens to be soccer. As a soccer ref, it was frustrating watching these guys. Some days are tough when you are paired with the baseball umpire still using hand signals from 30 years ago.
It’s insane how common it is when discussing high school sports referees to say “my 70 year old partner” or some other advanced age. The majority of These people don’t belong in refereeing, especially a physically demanding sport.
Monday, I did a JV2 boys game, dual with a brand new young referee. At half time, a staff member from the home school (he was wearing his school credentials) comes to me to ask how I stay so fit because he thought it was amazing. I told him that my Garmin says my fitness age is 48. Almost all of the players I do are younger than me (insert story here of a 90+ year old goalkeeper in the men's O-65), so I have to run and workout year round. It is still a bitter pill to swallow to accept that I should not be doing college men or men's open division games anymore. I will say that the problem isn't having old guys out there for high school. The problem is assignors unwilling to filter out the guys (it's always guys) with cranky attitudes who haven't opened the rule book in a while. It took us years to finally get a young guy out of the system who repeatedly had problems with his mouth. E.g. as AR2 on a high school game, he took it upon himself to tell the Athletic Director that he couldn't stand on the track during the game. He lost his State Referee badge because he couldn't get a maintenance assessment. Why couldn't he get a maintenance? He was suspended by the professionalism committee for a year! But the assignors are afraid they won't have enough referees, and rightly so. We have enough younger referees to cover afternoon high school games, for the most part. I did one high school game this year with a high school student. He was amazed that he got to be an AR on a varsity game. With the higher game fees we got two years ago, quite a few of our Hispanic officials are getting more per hour than their regular job for the time they are doing a game in the afternoon.
Later this fall, I will be with someone who is 81. He generally does JV or Varsity Girls, so I don't know why he was given a Boys Varsity match. Very mentally sharp, but for obvious reasons, he generally stays within a 5 yard circumference and whistles offsides from there. When I was a Grade 7 USSF referee, he was one of my assessors. His feedback in the post-game debrief was so antiquated (more appropriate for the 1980's) that one of my AR's walked out in the middle of it.
At our first HS meeting, our assignor said that we need to call the schools at least a day before because there are "a lot of new ADs" and they tend to change game and site times without telling him. Sure enough, yesterday morning I was informed that my 4:30 game had been changed to a 7 PM game. I have also noticed a general difference between a high school sports official who does soccer and a soccer referee. A lot of it has to do with understanding the game of soccer. Last week, my dual partner for a girls varsity game came out to the field with nothing to write with or on and he ran the whole game with the whistle in his mouth. At one point, there was a free kick near the penalty area right near him. I was on the coach's touchline and between the halfway line and the top of the penalty area. As the white team was taking the kick, it looked like a blue player ran in front of the ball. I thought that was what happened but because of the angle and distance I was from the play, I couldn't tell for sure. Sure enough, the white team coaches started to complain. I didn't throw him under the bus. I said, "He's right there. He's got a better view than any of us." When I asked him about it after the game, he said, "She didn't ask for ten." Of course, then there are times when I've done games with high school sports officials who do an incredible job so I don't want to say that it's everyone.
Of course there are occasional very old guys who can move around, but that’s an outlier not the norm. Having guys in their 70s refereeing a sport requiring as much running as soccer is understandably not a good look What’s the point of saying this? Inappropriate
Not at all. Our high school association is, roughly, one-third Hispanic, many with limited English. Their regular jobs aren't paying big money per hour. The facts are that they can make more money per hour refereeing high school soccer than they make elsewhere. That's why they can get away to do afternoon games. I'm not looking down on our Hispanic referees at all and this is NOT a political statement. I am very happy to work with them. It's just a socio-economic fact, at least in this part of the country. YMMV
Back when we had to do hand signals in New York, I heard a parent say that the refs looked like they were trying to hand a plane whenever they called a foul!
This year, I have been seeing more players try to wear under-sided shinguards than ever before. It used to be maybe 1 or 2 players per high school season, but now it is almost every game. Is it just me or is this common for other areas? My theory behind this is that high schoolers see professional players with the tiny shinguards and think that they can wear the same ones despite what it says in the NFHS rule book.
It wasn't a point of emphasis in our state until this year. Now I'm hearing stories of referees having their HS licenses pulled because of not enforcing the shin guard rule (not sure if that's true or not). Just this week, we gave the usual pregame speech to everyone about being legally equipped, stressing the shin guards. Our center even sent an e-mail a day or so ahead of time reminding both coaches and ADs about this. No more than 10 minutes into the game, I notice one of the player's socks sliding down his leg and could tell from the sideline that whatever shin guard was in his sock couldn't have been a legal length. At an injury stoppage, I point it out to the center and we call over the player. He tries pulling down his sock an inch or so to show that he had shin guards in, but we ask him to pull one out. Naturally, they're like 4 inches long, so we send him to the bench to get legal shin guards in. I know when my younger son played, he preferred as small of shin guards as he could get away with as well - but nobody seemed to care a couple years ago. I think he just felt like he was quicker with smaller shin guards. I doubt if it mattered, however.
It was a point of emphasis for our area as well, as a large portion of the annual meeting was spent on what they called micro or mini shin guards that are only a few inches long. I don't even know where the teens are buying these as I don't see them in other competitions I officiate in.
I want to say my son just went onto Amazon and bought the smallest youth sized shin guards he could find.
Two days ago, I issued a yellow card to a player for a frustration foul as the losing team was also losing their cool in the final minutes. My partner told me he gave the same teen a yellow the week before for the same reason. In HS, at least in this area, there is NO yellow card accumulation rule. What is the logic in that? Is it lack of resources to track kids who have to miss their next game? To me, it's bizarre to walk off the field and have to do no reporting on a game that had at least one caution issued and the yellow card is basically wiped out once you've left the field. Last week, I issued a red card for a SFP that 99% of the regular posters here would also have no problem with. The coach begged me after the game to make it a "double/yellow". Again, I am new to this HS culture, so a lot of this to me is bizarre compared to long-time HS referees who are multi-sport officials and have accepted this and are not USSF guys. The coach was very polite and didn't deny it was a thug play, but said it would be their second red card and with a potential third down the road, they are officially eliminated from any tournament or playoff competitions. An argument used after the game was "MetroFever, it's only early September....now I'll be petrified to put in a sub the next time we have a late lead!" I even received a phone call late in the day from "someone" asking me to consider not reporting it (before they saw the play on video tape). It's the type of play if it's not deemed as a yellow in HS soccer, then you would only be issuing a red card for a thrown punch. Here, it's a mandatory 2-game suspension for ANY red card (this play deserved it). This is a very draconian rule, that I'm sure long-time HS referees will find a way to justify. If a player receives a red card for DOGSO, why is it a "one-size fits all" and not a one-game suspension as it would be anywhere else?
This thread is just going to be “metrofever complaining after every game about the dumb crap every high school team does and how much high school soccer sucks”
I would imagine that the lack of yellow card accumulation is due to reporting and tracking capabilities of the states. In Ohio, a straight red is a 2 game suspension whereas a double yellow is 1 game. A straight red that's deemed fighting carries a 4 game suspension. Additionally, any player with 2 straight red cards is suspended for the remainder of the season. At one of our ref meetings last year, they said there was one team that lost their senior center back sometime in mid-September for the rest of the year due to 2 DOGSO's. Granted, what the hell was he thinking on the second one?
Where I am, not only is there no caution accumulation, but yellows are not reported to anyone in HS games
My question about yellow card accumulation is a fair one. I don't claim to know the behind-the-scenes stuff. Perhaps folks will say that their state does track cautions to keep these kids off the field who shouldn't be on there. If I don't ask, I won't know.
Let me start by saying that this is not a NFHS rules problem. Decisions about suspensions are made by the state high school association in each state. The state's policies are the result of competing pressures. On one side are those who want to give student-athletes the maximum opportunity to compete. Those pressures result in the 'soft red' rules, lesser suspensions for various reasons, such as 2CT, etc. On the other side are rising experiences of bad behavior, bad sportsmanship, which leans towards longer suspensions. Longer suspensions, however, produce behavior like Metro Feaver reports, where on field penalties get dumbed down, reds become yellows, yellows become warnings, coaches asking for referees to change what they report or, worse, not report cards. All of that is above our pay grade. We have to have the integrity to call what we see, give the cards that are necessary to control the game we are doing now, and not bend to pleas to report things differently. If you can't do the time, don't do the crime.
@Law5 is correct. Here is the situation in Illinois: 5 cautions = a 1 game suspension. 3 more = 2 game suspension, and so on. 1 red card = 1 game suspension. 2nd red card = 2 game suspension. Where it gets interesting is how yellows are treated as a team. In NCAA play, a player sent off for two cautions in a game gets charged with a yellow and a red. In IL, the player gets charged with two yellows AND a red. Teams are allowed to play 25 regular season matches. Any team accumulating 25 yellow cards (with exceptions for the more technical ones such as illegal jerseys) is banned from the state tournament. Refs are required to report all yellows and reds. Here is what really happens. Some refs give cards, but don't report them. Other refs downgrade on field punishments as outlined by @Law5 so that reds become yellows and yellows become warnings. Some refs give the cards and report them. Teams usually pick up a bunch of yellows in the first week, then the refs back off, so that when the refs go back to calling games the right way in the playoffs, a bunch of games finish with multiple ejections because the players have been conditioned over the course of the season that certain behaviors will not result in cards and they are unable to adjust to what the refs do in the playoffs.
Here we only report red cards. At one point, we did report yellow cards as 5 yellows equalled a one game suspension. The problem was that you reported the yellows to your assignor who would keep track. The problem was if a school was playing someone from another region that had a different assignor, the count wasn't always accurate. I have heard that the accumulation rule is still in effect, but I don't know how it's tracked. I also heard that one official gave a double yellow in a recent game and allowed the team to keep playing with 11 players even though NY hasn't done that since NFHS did anyway with soft reds.
I remember doing a HS girls 9th or 10th grade game once where as the teams are heading back onto the field after halftime I notice a player that obviously has no shinguards. "Are those the new invisible style shinguards"? A brief look of utter confusion was followed by realization she forgot to put them back in and a sprint back to the bench.
In NY where we ask if the players are legally and properly equipped, I specifically add "the mini shin guards which I wouldn't care about in club soccer are not allowed in school ball and are not allowed."
Home team is losing 2-1 late and I am directly in front of the home team bench area (dual system) and standing right on the touchline about 35-40 yards from goal. Away team defender attempts to clear the ball and at close-range the ball hits the home team attacker and then is deflected off of me, but the ball hugs the touchline and then is played again by the defender who clears the ball down the field. I didn't whistle and the home team Coach makes a beeline for me screaming that the since the ball was last played by her player then into my body, ball is dead and restart is a drop ball to them. Not sure how these Coaches come up with these "rules", but I admit that I was confused for a second.