um...I have to work down here...but please make clear that these observations are YOURS and YOURS alone!!! I did get called a cheater as I was walking out to my car.
It seems that the expectation in HS Girls Varsity that the play here is a PK while in Boys Varsity it would be a goal kick. I'm all ears if folks disagree with me. The timing of this post is interesting since I had a game this week where my partner claimed that NFHS already adopted IFAB's new encroachment rule. He is also a USSF ref, although I've never officiated with him before or heard of him, and was adamant he was correct. He even went out of his to claim it was covered in the new rules meeting our chapter had.
You are working the girls side, I never had to face them, though if I did, pretty certain we would lose. as an alumni of Nanuet, who gave up many, many goals to those three schools, yes, they are my own views.
I work both Boys and Girls...are you attending the Nanuet Alumni soccer match over the Thanksgiving Holiday??? I usually get invited to referee the Pearl River Alumni...so I can get yelled at by the old-timers...which I am very clearly one of them having graduated from South in 1980.
nah, it would have been a PK in my book for the boys as well. Though the amount of dissent I would have gotten would have been way worse.
NFHS rules are adopted in February and go into effect in August/September for the 2024-25 season. IFAB adopt the change in Marc to go into effect in July. If NFHS adopts this change, it will not go into effect until August/September 2025.
I would think that even without the "if no impact on play then no offense" clarification under NFHS, we could deem slight PA encroachment in HS as trifling if it resulted in no impact, interference, or benefit gained. At least that's how we seem to handle it in my HS association.
True but I have to add that quite a few states play high school soccer in the spring. Typically, their state has one sex in the fall and the other in the spring. Some states that are split play girls in the fall and boys in the spring, but there are others who go the other way. And some play in the winter. I believe that Arizona plays both fall and winter, two separate seasons. That means that any rule change passed by the NFHS soccer rules committee in February and approved by the NFHS national board in, I think, May, starts with the school year that begins in late August or September. A rule change adopted in February 2024 may not actually be used, in some states, until March of 2025, after the February 2025 rules committee meeting.
^^^ a bit like IFAB changes in PA-West, which take effect in January notwithstanding the fact that ours is a fall-spring season.
High school varsity girls. Smallest schools' division, last game of the regular season. Home team, ranked #1 in the state, going to the playoffs. Visitors, ranked #43 (of 47) going home. Home school has won I don't know how many state championships but by far the most in their classification. You practically start the season wondering who's going to play them in the final this year. Home team scores 19 seconds into the game. They were not the team that kicked off. A little girl from the home team is playing center mid. She keeps taking shots and missing or going straight to the visitors' keeper. Her teammates keep passing her the ball and she is always wide open. I quickly recognized what was going on. She had not scored all season and her teammates wanted to take this game as an opportunity for her to score. About the 13th minute of the game, she made it 5-0. Every teammate on the field had to do a mass hug with her. And then she trotted back to sweeper which was, apparently, her normal position. 30th minute and its now 8-0. Home team subs in an even smaller girl, maybe 4'10", wearing glasses, whose lower right leg twists out to the right. She's the left forward, way out on the wing. Her teammates keep trying to pass to her, but she is being marked closely, and the team is now just passing the ball around for the remaining ten minutes of the game anyway. She's a freshman but she got to play for the varsity team. She'll probably get to suit up for the state championship game next month and get a winner's gold medal. Maybe next year she'll get to score.
I was acting coach one game for my sons' team, about U11 rec. We were way ahead. The team themselves decided that Charlie should have a chance to score, since he hadn't done it all year. They kept shouting, "Pass it to Charlie." The other team couldn't even find Charlie to shut him down, and he finally scored. Too bad it was the only game that season that his mother couldn't attend.
That story just warms my heart. Had similar occurrences when I coached girls club... and have seen it multiple times as a referee... it just makes me smile .
We had a twist to that a few years back while I was coaching. To start with, it was the last game of the season and this rec league decided they'd have a U12 team play against a U14 team (without telling either team). The first clue was when the other team kept insisting on playing with a size 4 ball and that they had all season when we were using size 5, but I don't think we officially figured it out until close to half. As expected, it wasn't close. We pulled good players pretty quickly and by halftime were playing 2 or 3 players down. We already had 'minimal playing time players' playing full time and getting a goal. As a coach, there wasn't much more we could do. Midway through the 2nd half our defense took it upon themselves to make pretty dumb, but surprisingly not too obvious, mistakes to try and let the other team score. It took awhile but eventually they did. Both teams were very happy. The league didn't try this little experiment again.
You need to move to our state. If I had reached out to anybody on something like this it would have been a vague response requiring follow-up questions and not the detailed and well worded one you provided.
Had a similar experience with my daughters U14 AYSO game a number of years ago. Her team was one of the top couple. While AYSO tries hard to have balanced teams, it doesn’t always work. The team they were playing in the final game not only hadn’t won all season, they hadn’t scored. At half time the girl’s on my daughter’s team conspired to get the other team to score—and importantly, to not let the other team know it was a gift. They pulled it off. I don’t think the other team had a clue.
U19G match. Ten minutes in and one girl is struggling. Looks exhausted. "Hey, #14, you good?" "Yeah." We play five more minutes. Now she's doubled over with hands on knees. I go over there. "You sure you're ok?" "Bro, I'm still ********ed up from Homecoming last night." Her teammates within earshot giggled. "Yah, Suzie, you get it girl!" Well ok then. She spent most of the 2nd half puking behind her bench. Not just one-and-done, lots of vomit. After the 2nd or 3rd time I looked at her coach. He gave me the "what are you going to do?" look. Got the sense Suzie wasn't the only one feeling under the weather.
a common occurrence at every Sunday league or O30 / Men’s adult amateur match set for 8:00 am or 9:00 am Sunday. Lol
I love prom season. Besides the nails that have been done and now look like weapons, you can get some comical challenges trying to protect the legs. After a slide tackle I heard a defender say, "What am I doing!? I bought a high-low dress!" The down leg was going to be exposed and she didn't want to tear it up. She didn't slide the rest of the game.
Had a friends son break his nose in an early afternoon game on the night of prom. Made for some great pictures later.
Years ago, Soccer America would interview very good high school age players and they had some standard questions, one of which was 'what was your most embarrassing moment on the field? One girl replied, "It wasn't on the field. I was the three time defending state champion in the hurdles. My senior year at the state meet, I did a face plant on the first hurdle. Prom was that night."
I was coaching/mentoring/evaluating the referee crew for a first round high school playoff game, largest classification boys. The first twenty minutes of the game were a nothing burger. Absolutely nothing going on, in a playoff game! The loser's season is going to be over! And it's 0-0 with virtually no shots, much less on goal. A few minutes later, though, white's midfield is all back playing defense, leaving black's middies unmarked. At half, it's 4-0 for black. Both coaches put in the subs early in the second half. Then it happened. White's goalkeeper has a high ball coming towards him. It's going to be coming down a little short of him, so he's waiting to play it on the bounce. One of his teammates, facing the goal, decides that he needs to help the keeper, who is maybe a yard away. The defender raises his foot above the keeper's waist, exposing cleats, in an unsuccessful attempt to kick it somewhere. The keeper shies back from the foot almost in his gut, as the ball rolls into the goal. This raised the question, in my mind, of dangerous play against a teammate. Of course, you'd apply advantage but the team gaining the advantage wasn't even in the goal area. Can you imagine the keeper's coach yelling "Ref, we don't want advantage there!" Wait, what? I wouldn't put it past some clever coach to try to confuse the referee in that situation. The second half was basically JV level players on both teams, but the home team's subs still dominated. The game ended in the 71st minute under the mercy rule, 8-0.
Oh, and one more thing I saw. Sunday was a women's college club game. D1 colleges, but a mid level high school game at best. The visiting (cross town) team's coach/administrator is a tall, thin very polite Asian man wearing a suit and tie with highly polished black dress shoes. I can't remember the last time I did a game where the coach was wearing a suit. The other team's guy is wearing a knee length cold weather puffy jacket and a bucket hat.