Assessment Day

I won't make this long, but it all boils down to what match gets assessed to get your confidence up or not. My assessment did just that. I had a good game, with good ARs and while the teams were not puritan, they were not evil. Just enough dissent and calls that made for a good assessment. If they had gotten my match from that Sunday, it would have been another story. That match was a lot more complicated, between the parents, the players, the coaches, everyone was whining about calls. And I made some procedural mistakes.

For example, instead of going over and having a mini conference with my AR over the location of a foul (in the box or not), I asked him loudly while surrounded by players. I guess I was flustered and just wanted the slugfest to end. So fortunately, the assessment was one of the easier matches.

What was most interesting that weekend was the first match, where I was the AR. In the second half, with White leading 1-0, White had the ball and a player was fouled but he played through it. The center (who was a really athletic grade 8, but kind of nervous and always ran with his whistle in his mouth). In this play, White fought through the foul and the center correctly yelled "Play on!". However, when letting that out he also blew the whistle. It sounded, I heard it and three defenders stopped playing. The attacker did not and passed it to a team mate who scored on a baffled keeper.

The defense surrounded the center and he insisted that he did not blow the whistle. I went on to the field and conferenced with him so that he would not dig himself any deeper and told him (without any players present) that I had heard the whistle, and he needed to restart with a dropped ball as an inadvertent whistle. He did after much coaxing. And of course, in the last play of the game, the other team got a goal and tied it up, so the parents of the White team let me have a deluge of pleasantries. Oh well, no good deed goes unpunished.