As you know, I have said many times that I love doing matches with my daughter (and when my son was doing matches, with him as well). I thought it was a great bonding experience, we had fun and gave us something to do, together, that was akin to what some other people say they feel when they volunteer or do good, etc.
So to have a match that in my eyes ended my daughter's career or desire to referee is something I don't look fondly too. I have always tried to shield her since she wasn't as committed as my son was when he was doing it. And I am not sure if she is using the excuse to say that the match in question caused her to not want to ref anymore rather than just say that she lost the desire a while back. That is something that I am not sure she would admit to.
Anyway, the match in question, and I have to be careful of how I word it because I don't want it to be easily identifiable for the center in question since there is a lot of fallout from this match apparently.
We were not at home, but rather at a tournament elsewhere, where we were put up in a hotel, so we had a bunch of matches on Saturday and the last one was where both my daughter and I were together as ARs for a center that we both knew up in Northern VA.
Anyway, it was a bad situation, we had an issue before kick off that set the tone for a really rough match and at the end the center had to abandon the game due to threats from the sideline. My daughter says that this match, the fact that she felt we had to run for our lives (and we didn't, but it sorta felt that way at the moment) and the complete disaster that it was has given her pause and wants to not recertify.
I hold that center substantially responsible for the fact that my daughter does not want to ref anymore. She did work the Sunday matches with me and I thought she had a good time, but it seems that it wasn't enough to sway her back to reffing. I suspect she didn't really want to ref anymore and found this match as a gift as the excuse to say she didn't but the truth is that this center that I held in such high regard made a series of mistakes and let's just say, I would have handled things differently.
On the bright side, I have a lot more equipment and gear to work with now. And thankfully I had not bought my daughter the new ref shirts since we can use them until the end of 2018.
Friday, December 8, 2017
Wednesday, December 6, 2017
Hiatus
Boy did I take a hiatus these past 3 months. I always had it in my head that I have to post about this or that and sure enough, life would get in the way (or more games) and as they say, the rest is history. So I apologize for not getting into some of the things I wanted to talk about. At this point, the commentary about being a site coordinator is a mere figment of my memory. I do recall there being an issue with a coach who had been ejected and me having to play interference between the ejected coach and the crew that ejected him. It was nothing too terrible, but it did escalate a bit because they had to call me out to the field and make sure that the crew was able to walk off the field without the coach coming to talk to them since there was nothing that could be said at the moment.
I also will touch on a game I did in Richmond that at the moment I thought would strengthen my daughter's resolve to be a great referee but it did just the opposite. This will be in my next post because I am still quite saddened by it, by the fact that my daughter will not recertify for next year and I hold someone I looked up to fully responsible for botching a match so badly that it lead my daughter to decide that she has had enough. So that will be next time (who knows, my next post could be in 2019 and I won't even remember that I wanted to talk about it).
But I will share something interesting that I calculated today. As I mentioned, I keep a spreadsheet of all my matches. And to this day, I have calculated that I have worked a total of 914 matches since I started in August of 2008. That is a lot of matches. It comes out to 109 matches a year. It is scary to think that I have worked that many matches since starting.
Anyway, I will try to catch up on the following topics in the next couple of weeks:
- World Cup
- The match that led to my daughter's retirement
- My latest recent class
Hope everyone has a great holiday season if I don't get to posting before 2018 starts!
I also will touch on a game I did in Richmond that at the moment I thought would strengthen my daughter's resolve to be a great referee but it did just the opposite. This will be in my next post because I am still quite saddened by it, by the fact that my daughter will not recertify for next year and I hold someone I looked up to fully responsible for botching a match so badly that it lead my daughter to decide that she has had enough. So that will be next time (who knows, my next post could be in 2019 and I won't even remember that I wanted to talk about it).
But I will share something interesting that I calculated today. As I mentioned, I keep a spreadsheet of all my matches. And to this day, I have calculated that I have worked a total of 914 matches since I started in August of 2008. That is a lot of matches. It comes out to 109 matches a year. It is scary to think that I have worked that many matches since starting.
Anyway, I will try to catch up on the following topics in the next couple of weeks:
- World Cup
- The match that led to my daughter's retirement
- My latest recent class
Hope everyone has a great holiday season if I don't get to posting before 2018 starts!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)