Yet Another Soccer Referee

Happy New Year

2012-01-09T12:36:00.001-05:00

I need to finish my write ups of the last two days of the December College Showcase tournament but just had a lot going on. I promise to do so shortly. In the meantime, happy New Year and hope everyone has a great start to 2012.

Alabama Showcase Part 2

2011-12-22T16:02:00.000-05:00

The next day was one where I was kind of nervous. We were now going to center matches and so the stakes were a little higher. As I was observing a couple of previous matches, I saw that some of the centers were letting play go on more than what I normally do. At that moment I decided that I was going to let them play when I was in the center since that was what most of these others were doing. It turned out to be a mistake. The reason it was a mistake was because I was then not able to call my game and was taking longer to determine if it was a foul that I was not going to call that I would normally call. Then they started flopping and trying to buy fouls because I must have been all over the place with fouls. Let's just say it was unfortunate. Lesson learned for sure. And it was really hard to reign them in after because they did not know what type of game I was going to officiate.

In the second match, where I was an AR, the center decided to do the opposite. Call a tight game and ease up if needed. Turned out to be a better thing to do instead of the other way around. So if nothing else, ref your match as you see fit. Then make small adjustments accordingly, but at the end of the day, at least you can live with yourself after the match it over. The feeling I had that second night was terrible. I felt like I let the kids down and it was because I had.

At the same time, some kids were really letting me have it. Saying that I was the worst referee they had ever had, that I could not recognize what a foul was and what a flop was, etc. I was so out of my element that I should have started carding for such snide remarks but I felt like I couldn't. Things got better though for the other two days, so don't feel too bad for me.

Alabama Showcase Part 1

2011-12-16T16:16:00.000-05:00

Don't know how long this series will be, but let me go day by day, so possibly 3-4 entries. We set off as a group of 4 down to Birmingham. 725 miles is a long way to go to ref some soccer matches but it was fun. We arrived late that evening and had to work 2 games on that Thursday through Sunday.

On Thursday I had the chance to work the National League games, U16 boys. Did an AR and got to do my first 4th official. I enjoyed that one. It was cold, but under the lights, it was fun. One coach did not know the rules and tried to have a kid reenter the field of play during the same half, which was a no-no for this event. He also tested the limits of what was acceptable the whole time but was a good handful, if you will.

In the second half of that match (center was a 5, AR1 was a 6 and AR2 was an 8), AR1 is deep in his own half and a ball goes out of play close to me on the sideline. I clearly see if go off of white for a blue throw (10 minutes left in a 1-1 game) but AR1 points the other way. I silently indicate to the center that it should go the other way as a way of suggestion. He comes over and verifies (I was 5 feet away, so it made sense) and goes with my call (against the chatty coach and so he goes ballistic). 3 minutes later, similar thing happens, but I point the other way, again silently, and the center does not see me, so the coach goes crazy one more time.

Being the 4th basically was summed up as letting them vent and then putting them back in their place (not stepping onto the field and sitting down after giving instructions, etc).

So that way day 1. More to come on the other days soon.

In Alabama

2011-12-08T11:05:00.001-05:00

Really looking forward to this college showcase tournament we are participating in. We arrived last night and are heading to the fields shortly. I hope to have impressions of what I see while out here for these next 4 days.

What to do?

2011-11-21T16:09:00.001-05:00

How do you go up to a referee and tell them they are terrible and should not referee a game ever again? Perhaps instead you can start out by saying something like, rough match. How did you feel doing that game?

My daughter, playing in a U10 tournament this weekend had a referee that could not get one call right. Not one call. The referee was a younger rather than older, probably around 25. She did not make one offside call, and there were plenty. She did not call one single foul on any team, and there were at least 10 possible calls, 3 absolute calls. She missed 50% of the throw ins (she guess on all of them). She did not move much out of the center circle.

At the end of the match I wanted to walk over to her and tell her something. Either something positive or something like, please do not referee again at this level until you feel comfortable doing rec. I am all for putting people up to the challenge, but she was way out of her league. I really just wanted to ask the experts what you thought, and what can be said, if anything, to someone who has a terrible game.

To finish up the story, I did not go and say anything to her. My daughter was hurt towards the end of the match, and my responsibility was to her more than to the referee, so that was that. The following morning, we had the pleasure of an early game when I see her walking down from her car and I cringed. Fortunately, she went to the field right by ours. It was a U11 Boys match that was warming up. Needless to say it was an unmitigated disaster. She had both coaches on the field at one moment, yelling at her, at each other. The parents of both teams yelling at each other and the field marshal (a parent with a bright vest, normally) trying to control everything.

The anger towards her had been bubbling up in the first half when she did not move much and proceeded to make the same mistakes she did previously, bad calls one way or another. The moment of truth, or the moment all heck broke loose was when she whistled for a foul where the attacking team had to take the kick. She was having the team take a free kick inside the box. Picture it, a free kick that is not indirect, about 2 feet away from the 6 yard box. Finally, one coach stepped onto the field and reminded her that a free kick of that nature is a PK or indirect. She changed it to a PK. The team scores but the other coach is now on the field, and though I am not sure what happened, but she suspends the match at halftime. She sits by the sideline for 15-20 minutes until another referee shows up and he does the second half. She leaves. I wonder what happened exactly but somehow it is a mounting of errors, from the assignor, to the parents, to the coaches and especially the referee herself. If I catch her again, I will try to offer some advice, but it is hard to approach someone to tell them how terrible they are and then offer some tips. Any suggestions?

Small Field, Big Bodies

2011-11-14T14:27:00.001-05:00

Yesterday was fun, it is the reason I ref, it is why I like to do what I do. An end of season match in a lower division U15 boys match. The field was a smallish field on one of the side fields at a middle school close to home. Normally, big boys such as those in U15 or above tend to garner a lot of attention and given that the field was small and bumpy, the kids were big, I was expecting a lot of traffic and a whole lot of fouls and a bunch of plastic.

Surprisingly, I did whistle more fouls that I normally do on a bigger field, but no plastic at all. And it was a fun game, though nobody could really control the ball on such an iffy field. Still it was a fun end of season match instead of those end of season matches that sometimes get out of hand because of the kids who would rather fight than play soccer. Hats off to these kids who played a good game and did not decide that they were two close to each other. Maybe something a little positive to prepare me for a winter trip to Alabama and more reffing...more on that later.

End of Season

2011-11-11T12:48:00.001-05:00

Well, we are coming to the end of the season. It has been a frustrating season. I hope to be able to reveal some of the aspects that made it a rough season. I will go over the basics for two ongoing things that will be flushed out once concluded.

1. Injury to player causes a problem to the referee. In a match where I was an AR, one player was hurt and some bystanders (observing another match) may have filed some sort of official complaint against the center referee. More to come on that.

2. Worst referee in America does a match where my son is playing and sends him off for getting hit in the head by another player's fist. Unbelievable.

Since both things are still up in the air, I will not comment, but man am I angry. Hopefully more info as I have it on both of these issues.

Answer to the trivia question

2011-10-03T16:47:00.002-04:00

If you have been thinking about the scenario I presented about the PK shot hitting the sub and then going in, well, here is your answer. According to that scenario, the restart, is a goal kick. Not sure how they came to that conclusion but that is what I was told, so I pass that on to you.

More to come later. For now, stay warm.

Breaking News: Official Sports

2011-09-06T17:14:00.000-04:00

There may be a problem with Official Sports and credit card processing. Right now they are not taking online orders and I have seen some emails going back and forth from others stating that everyone should check their credit cards for possible fraudulent charges and to look at their Facebook page for a message.

Anyway, take a look at your statements if you have bought from them recently. I know I have and will be checking mine to ensure that there are no charges that I do not recognize.

2 hurdles passed, a couple more to go

2011-09-06T14:40:00.000-04:00

Don't have a ton of time to go into a lot of detail but I passed my written exam with a 91. Due to a confusion when I registered, I had to take the 5/6 exam instead of the 7/8 exam. The system thought I was a grade 7 going for my 6 instead of an 8 going for my 7. The exam was a lot harder than I expected with a lot of questions regarding USSF Position Papers instead of strict Laws of the Game. The one I remember was a sub runs onto the field while a PK is being taken (both the kicking team and the sub are on the same team). The PK hits the sub while taking the kick and goes into the goal. After cautioning the sub for entering the field of play, what is the restart? Yeah, cause I get that a lot in my matches.

Then I also did the physical a week later and it went better than I expected. I did a little over 6.5 laps in the 12 minutes (5.5 laps was what I needed), was able to run the 200m in 30.5 seconds (40 was the limit) and the 50m in 6 seconds (9 was the limit). The 12 minute run was the most difficult because you had to keep on running no matter what, regardless if you completed your 2,200 meters prior to the 12 minutes. If you walked at any moment, you immediately failed. At least that is what the instructor said.

Now I have to do my assessment match. I have worked with my assignor to secure three possible assessment level matches and then in October I have to attend a referee upgrade seminar. To tell you the truth, I think it is just easier to be an 8. From what I have seen up to now, not worth it to go to a 7 other than personal satisfaction. But perhaps once I complete it, I will get more games that are not of the U13 girls variety (if you have read my posts before, that age group is the one I detest the most, because it is like watching paint dry).

Shoot me a comment if you are interested in taking a guess at the scenario above. I will post the answer that I was told at the recert class.

Going for my 7

2011-07-20T12:20:00.000-04:00

They don't make it easy, at least in Virginia, to become a grade 7. I just registered on the USSF website and tomorrow I can try and sign up on the VA website for a 7 upgrade exam and all that. Then it is a physical exam as well that you need to sign up for. I emailed our point of contact at the state level and still don't seem to have all the answers. I will post more but now it is time to start running, as the Cooper test as I think it is called, requires running 2,200 meters in 12 minutes. That is the one I am most worried about, but if I start running, that should be ok.

I downloaded a program called Nike + GPS for my phone that should help with this. We will see how it goes, but I am going to give it a shot. From my calculations, 2,200 meters is just short of 1.4 miles in 12 minutes, so that is my goal. Then there is a 200 meter dash in less than 40 seconds and a 50 meter dash in less than 9 seconds. For some reason, those don't scare me as much as the long run of 1.4 miles in 12 minutes. Anyone who has some experience in that, please post your tidbits of knowledge. More in that later.

End of Season numbers

2011-06-17T15:23:00.000-04:00

Quite a few matches done this season. I have 3 more matches tomorrow for an all-star tournament and will be at 75 matches for this season, by far my most active season. I certainly have enjoyed it.

I am also trying to get the wife to approve a trip to Birmingham Alabama for a four day ref fest. More on that to come shortly as well as the final numbers once everything is said and done. Anyway, stay hydrated in the meantime.

Persona non grata

2011-06-09T12:32:00.000-04:00

This post will deal little with reffing per se. Instead, as I mentioned in my last post, I am now a director of referees for the club my kids play for. This has led me to see some of the other aspects of working a tournament or dealing with issues that come up with assignors, etc.

As one of the things I have had to deal with are changes in the club, policy revision and dealing with complaints from referees and those that dislike referees or disagree with decisions.

Which leads me to a tangent rant today. I will go over some of the things that I have had to deal with as a director of referees shortly but today we will discuss something different because it needs to be said and it has to get off my chest somehow.

The club made some changes in terms of who is allowed to coach a couple of months ago. There is an emphasis on not going with parent coaches because of all the issues that brings. Well, the board voted on making sure that parent coaches were deemphasized and decremented substantially. It is done for the good of everyone, not a select few but because of that decision, people are suddenly cold (the ones that did not like that decision). It is hard, but I believe that the decisions taken were for the good of everyone and not just some kids. Parents sometimes take this way too seriously (and yes, I know it is their kids but still, at such a young age group like the ones we are working with, as long as the trainers are competent, there really should not be such a big deal, at least that is how I see it).

Because of that, many parents do not talk to me anymore. They just walk away. I know it will blow over eventually, but gosh darn it, people suck sometimes.

Ok rant complete, sorry to take you on a sidetrack here. More real ref stuff to come shortly but this is something that comes along with the director of referees bit, so you might be getting some of this as well thrown in. Hope you are all ok with that.

Yikes! It's been a while

2011-06-03T14:20:00.000-04:00

Not much to say other than I am sorry. I have a ton of material from this season but not much time to go over it. I am at 65 matches for this season, I think a new personal high and at the same time, I have become the director of referees for our local club and as such have to deal with some of the more minute details of what goes on behind the scenes. Dealing with the assignor and getting to know the 100+ referees that ref for the club's rec program and the travel teams. Not much time to blog, to tell you the truth but I know you all deserve better, so I will do my best to try and give you some content for the summer.

Close the fridge, will ya!

2011-04-11T12:12:00.000-04:00

Seriously, it is basically mid April and I am still wearing my long sleeve kits with a couple of colors underneath to keep warm (my go to color underneath is yellow because the club I most work for uses it for their uniforms, so I end up wearing black or red as the outer color).

Rant aside, I worked 6 matches this weekend and there are three storylines I wanted to share with you. The first is a funny one. The first match this weekend was because I was at the field observing our younger core of refs and helping out. One ref was hurt and so I did his match while waiting for my 1pm match. It was a U6 match of the rec league. Loved every minute of it.

I did have a trying time with a little boy named Frank. At U6, you normally get a couple of kids that have not played soccer before and this was the case Frank. He thought soccer was football and he ran off with the ball, tucked under his arm at least three times. Once all the way to restroom area 100 yards away before his father tackled him. He also believed in causing some damage to teammates and opponents alike. He took down players left and right. I was close to actually carding the kid (only half serious) but his coach and father made it tolerable. Hopefully Frank figures out how it all works.

The second one is related to goal safety. Please make sure that the goals are anchored and/or have some sort of weight on them. We had an incident where some of the mobile goals were not really anchored well because of the rain and one of our referees checking the goal was able to tip it over with one finger. Thankfully someone was checking. Please do the same.

Finally, I worked with some referees this weekend that were interesting characters. The first was one that stated he had worked over 4,000 matches and his preference was 12-16 matches a weekend plus high school. He expected at least double the centers than ARs (so 2 centers per AR match given to him) and a minimum of 6 matches per day. More power to him but goshdarnit what a beating he takes both mentally and physically.

The second interesting ref story was one of a father/son combo where the father took his AR responsibilities very lightly and then in the center was absolutely the opposite. It certainly appeared that he did not appreciate an AR role at all. He did not run at all as an AR and ran only marginally more as a center (while still handing out plastic for relatively low level stuff).

That is all I have for today. Thanks for the emails and look forward to hearing from you all with comments, etc.

PBB - Parents behaving badly

2011-03-12T18:11:00.000-05:00

Where are the worst soccer parents from? In a more travelled tournament than those I have worked before, I think I found the team that has the worst parents. They yelled, screamed, threatended and did a whole slew of other things that make them take the cake as far as I am concerned.

I do have to admit that the first half of their match between their team and another from North Carolina had to have been one of the worst officiated halfs I had ever seen. The guy in the center made me feel ashamed that I was on his crew, but I did back him up. The second half got better but it was too late as the damage was done. So who were these people? They were from eastern PA, just outside of Philadelphia it appears. And they tied 4-4. I'd hate to see them when they lose.

Money for nothing

2011-03-07T16:45:00.000-05:00

Literally the above title is true. The weekend before last I was offered to ref a couple of premier leagues matches. I checked with the wife to make sure things were kosher and emailed back saying I was in at around 3pm that Friday. By 4:30 I was told that one of the teams was probably not going to come because they had been told about the change in venue too late for them to alter their plans, so they were not coming. By 5:30, I had been removed by the two matches and thought nothing of it (originally there were 3 matches with 2 crews in total and when one of the matches was suspended, they changed it to one crew for the two matches and I was not on the working crew).

On Tuesday I get a check in the mail for having been part of this email exchange. Apparently since the team that did not show was declared to have forfeited, all the monies due to the referees had to be paid. This was the first time I was paid for just saying I was going to be part of a match.

Cool product - Soccer Shaving Cream for wall management

2011-01-21T18:15:00.000-05:00

I have been meaning to write this blog post for the last couple of months, but I did not have all the information to present to you, so I did not write it up. I had bought a set of four sprays that help with wall management. I decided to try and use it for the first time during one of my more competitive matches this season, a U19 D1 girls match (which ended 3-3, so it was indeed competitive).

Anyway, the product is very cool. It is a spray that looks like shaving cream and comes with a cell-phone like holster. When a foul occurs where you need to set up a wall, you spray the stuff and the goo sits there for about a minute before disappearing. I only had to do it twice in that match, but it was funny to see the players react to it. I did let them know that it was coming in my pregame chat with the team and that I expected them to stand behind the line.

How it works: It does not need to be shaken, it works when you hold down the can (upside down of course!) and press the nozzle with both your index and middle fingers (there is a ledge on each side of the nozzle, so it is very simple). I recommend from about 10 inches above the ground, point it at the ground and spray a line where the players are to stand. It works on artificial turf as well as grass and doesn't leave a mark.

I had originally seen it on TV, on GolTV, in a match for the Copa Sudamericana. The ref had what looked like a cell phone on his hip. I immediately wanted to know what it was. And the reason that I had not posted it until now was the fact that I could not for the life of me remember what that site was where I had ordered it from. Until now. So, if you want to get your hands on the latest and greatest for those rougher matches (not really needed for U10 girls to be truthful) then get it from here: http://www.soccersprays.com/

On the site it has how to apply it and it works well. It also lasts quite a while, I bought a pack of 4 with the holster for around $30 and I am still on my first can as I only use it for U15 and above matches and there are not that many of them.

This is the can, when you ref, take the cap off

If you do decide to get it, let me know as I have not heard anyone else mention this stuff, either in forums or with fellow referees but I am curious to hear what your personal experience is with this tool. It certainly should help. I wonder what else it can be used for out on the soccer pitch. It has my vote as product of the year for 2010 as I did not know it existed before then.

Tomorrow I have a soccer convention so hopefully I will see what MLS and FIFA are pushing for this coming year. Till then.

Recert for 2011

2011-01-18T12:12:00.000-05:00

Just had my recert class this Saturday. I have to get all my notes together before my next post, but the one point of emphasis was to be more vigilant with concussions and above the shoulders contact. Especially elbow to neck or head contact.

I scored a 98% with 2 questions wrong out of 75 (which I know is not 2%, it is more like 3% but that is what the instructor put on the sheet, so I am going with that). The first one was more of a trick question regarding dangerous play and the second was something of the same where a team with 7 players has another player leave the field without permission (but did not indicate whether the player left for good, or just stepped off the field to receive medical attention or to put an onside player in an offside position) and asked if you suspend the match because he did so and the team was now down to 6 (but without the knowledge of whether that player was returning shortly or not).

I think I would have still gotten the 7 to 6 player question incorrect, because I thought that if a team with 7 players had to go to 6 for any reason, the match ended right there, but if it is for a short while, like medical attention, the match can continue (fortunately it has not happened to me just yet!).

Once I have the time to gather all the minute things from the exam and handouts, I will post them here. Next week there is a youth conference I will be attending that should have more info on what they want us to focus on.

Watch Update

2011-01-04T16:47:00.000-05:00

We are in the dearth of games due to winter so there is little to comment on. I can say one thing though as an update from the previous post. I found my old watch! More accurately, my daughter found it. Needless to say, now I don't like it as much as the new ones.

Not much else to report except for the upcoming conference I go to every year as well as my certification class and the high school ref gathering. Lots of stuff to talk about in the coming weeks. Hope everyone had a good holiday.

Watches

2010-11-07T18:54:00.001-05:00

This past week, as I was preparing for my matches this weekend, I discovered that I could not locate my regular watch (and still have not been able to). I had bought my watch about 2 years ago at Walmart and had been happy with the purchase. It had something that I know some refs do not use, and that is a countdown function. That watch had cost me $15 or so and had a velcro strap, which made it easy to adjust. And though I know that I will find it at some moment, I realized Friday afternoon, that I was going to have to make an investment in getting another.

Some of the places online, make it a big deal that they have soccer referee specific watches, and I am sure that they are better than the standard ones I use. I know that there are ones that countdown and then count up once the time has been consumed so you know how much additional time you have added. There are others that look almost like those athletic stop watches that track and field people use and have huge numbers so that it is easy to read.

For me, I decided on going with 2 watches (I heard someone tell me that it is recommended to go with two just in case one goes bad and you do not have ARs that can back you up). So I trotted to Kmart and ended up buying two Casio watches. Not both the same because that would have been silly in case the design had a problem that I did not like. The two models I bought were a Casio W-752 and a Casio W-93H. Total cost was around $35 for both (they were running a special of sorts, regular price is more like $45 for both).

The W-752 has a long life battery (it said 10 years, but I am sure it is not that long) and had larger numbers, so I wear that one on my right (I am a lefty and use a wrist strap whistle on my left hand). I normally wear my watch on my right so that is where I go most of the time to consult how much is left. It has a countdown timer but no bells and whistles with regards to that countdown timer. Here is a picture of the watch:

The second watch is smaller (the W-93H) but I fell in love with it almost instantly. And why you ask? Because its countdown timer has a couple of features that I was not expecting (not for $15 at least). There is one to immediately restart, so that when it hits 0:00, it begins at 40, or 35 minutes, or whatever you were at. I can see this option working if you want to add time, and you say, ok, I am going to add two minuites, so we go to 33:00. I have not used that function yet (I did 4 matches this weekend, 2 in center and two as an AR). The other feature it has is awesome to tell you the truth. You can have it beep when the countdown timer hits 10 minutes remaining, 5 minutes and then every minute until 1, then every 10 seconds until 5 seconds, and then every second until it is done.

I find this feature to be very useful as I do not need to be looking. Today, when it beeped for 10 minutes, I already knew that was the 10 minute beep, the second one told me we had 5 remaining and I did not look at my watch until it started doing the 10 second chirps. To be truthful, I find the 10 second (at 50 seconds, 40 seconds, etc) to be overkill, but otherwise an awesome watch. The numbers are smaller, but still a great buy for $15 at Kmart. I might go get another one for when this one dies or cannot be located. I certainly hope that doesn't happen soon!

The strange final - my daughter's

2010-10-22T14:36:00.001-04:00

In this tournament that I have been able to string out for 4 posts up to this point, I had my son and daughter playing as well. Though my son's matches were great, there was nothing referee related that was worth mentioning. He played on a field that was terrible (the outfield of a softball field, where one side of the field (about 25-30% of the left midfield area was actually the infield of the softball field) and since it was wet in the mornings, it made for some ugly play but other than that, nothing worth mentioning here.

My daughter's team, a U9 team, shouldn't have anything significant either because, they are 8 or 9 years old and do not really have the command of soccer that a U12 and up might have. Regardless, I have to mention them in this because what happened in their final match. To set it up, both teams reached the final by winning their corresponding groups. My daughter's team with wins of 5-1, 2-0 and 5-1. The other team with wins of 2-0, 1-0 and 3-1, so the stage was set.

I had noticed the referees working the two fields prior to my daughter's final were both young, asian and quite proper with the interpretations, paying attention and not sleepwalking (it is U9 after all, and many of you know how slow some of these matches are). Anyway, the final gets under way just as the other field finishes their last match. The ref on that field stuck around to see the final that had just started. The match itself was close, but nothing to knock on the ref in the first half. The half ends 0-0 and at halftime, I see both refs changing their shirts to match and they both come on to the field.

They both worked the second half of the final match, one of them on one side and the other on the far side. I was taken for a loop, as I did not know what the heck was going on. Has anyone ever had something like this happen? I know people switch the ref due to injury, etc. but I had never seen anything like this, where the only ref of the match suddenly goes to a two-man system mid match. And if you are going to do that, fine, but be aware that you cannot do that for half of the match and that you have to do it with a real 2-man system like I have done before, not this is my half and that is your half. In the end, the original ref called a PK with 40 seconds left in regulation (I guess they did not want to go to overtime) and my daughter's teammate scored to win the championship.

In all of this, I don't disagree with the calls made during the match, before or after the two-man system was implemented, but this is not how you ref matches. I should have said something to them but the end of the match was frantic, with the girls hugging and running up and down the pitch in celebration and I wanted to soak that in instead of going to educate the refs. I did not see them after that, so the opportunity was lost, but it was still a strange series of events. Since we are so close to Halloween, does anyone else have some of these weird referee horror stories?

Time Management and frantic final

2010-10-21T16:52:00.000-04:00

The first match of the tournament weekend had a team winning 1-0 thanks to an own goal. The tournament had a rule that specifically said there was no added time. This is typical of tournaments so that they do not fall behind with added time. So with literally 15 seconds, the team losing 1-0 gets a cross in and one of the defenders knocks the ball down with her hand. I wave my flag as an AR, once I have the center's attention, I hold the flag across my hip to indicate it was in the box for the attacking team. It took the center a second or two to figure out what had happened but we were ok except that we were already 2-3 minutes behind because even though there is no added time, you have to extend the match for a PK. Talk about a oxymoron.

The girl taking the PK winds up and takes a good shot to the right of the keeper who makes a wonderful one handed save, and the rebound goes directly back to the kicker who now has the goal wide open, but alas, the center ref (abiding by the rules, mind you) calls for the end of the match because we were 3 minutes past the end without there being any additional time allowed. The coach for the losing team came out ready to rip our heads off, but we stood our ground, explained that the rules were clear, no additional time, and walked off the field. Interesting to say the least when you have so much happen in so little time. The other 57 minutes of the match were much less exciting than the final 3 minutes were for sure.

More on the tournament weekend - The Injury

2010-10-18T14:51:00.000-04:00

As promised last time, I was going to go over what happened during the match where I had my first major injury (not to me but rather a player). The match itself was supposed to be a preliminary match between two teams from the same club but since they both were in the final as well (as they finished first in each of their respective brackets with one game left, they were going to play each other again regardless of the outcome of my match). The coach (who was the coach for both teams as well) asked me if it was ok for them to just play the final now and record the score twice, one for the round robin match and one for the final. I could not see a problem with that.

The game started and it was clear who the A team was and who the B team was. The blue team attacked the whole first half but the closest chance was for the yellow team. Still at the half they were 0-0. At the start of the second half, the star attacker of the blue team tried to force a corner and was nudged as he was turning his body to kick the ball off the defender and he landed on his wrist awkwardly. I was close to the play and heard a faint pop and knew that something was not well. His wrist was in a weird angle and fortunately, two doctors were at the field and were able to stabilize him enough so when the EMTs arrived, it was not a dire thing. Off to the hospital he went.

Meanwhile, the boys still wanted to finish the match, but the coach having lost his 4th player in 2 weeks (I found out later) asked me if I had any problem going straight to PKs. I did not, as long as everyone was in agreement. In the meantime, they also decided to not have the PKs actually determine the winner, as they would both share the championship. So instead of having an actual 5 PKs per team, they all got to shoot once, regardless of the score. In the end, it did take 10 PKs per side to determine the winner, with the keepers being the kickers. The B team keeper missing and the A team keeper scoring to 'win' it.

Finally, I later found out that the player had suffered a fractured wrist. I really hope he gets better quickly as he is a fantastic player and fun to watch.

A lot to talk about

2010-10-11T10:49:00.000-04:00

Man it was an interesting weekend of soccer. I do not have the time to write it all out, but just so I can remember all the talking points, I will list them out here...

The first major injury on my watch
Frantic final on the first match of the weekend tournament and clock management
The weird final (which happened to be my daughter's)
A new fan dangled technology for refs

I do not have the time to write each of these out right now but I wanted to at least list them while they are fresh in my head so that when the time comes and I can add to each of these stories I will. There is a lot to talk about and some of these posts, I want to get your opinion as there is no clear answer, in my book.

Nuggets of wisdom

2010-09-13T10:58:00.004-04:00

What a beautiful weekend. Weather was great on Saturday for my start of the regular season. In the morning I worked a U12 boys match that was not particularly interesting except two nuggets. They happened one right after another. To lay the scenario down, it was one of the local teams versus a team that was heavily latino. In my past experience, the heavy latino presence tends to favor that team as they play more of a control/individual style as opposed to the boom and run that most anglo teams like to play. In this match, it did not work out for that team. It was perhaps that they did not have enough players (9 suited with 8 on the field) as well as U12 being 35 minute halves instead of 30. So they basically ran out of gas after going up 1-0 early in the match.

In the second half with the match pretty much decided for the other team (they were up 3-1 and pounding heavily for more), I call a free kick close to the top left corner of the penalty box. On the run up to the kick, the defending team's wall, instead of holding their position, run up to try to block the kick. One boy moved up a foot or so, but the other had charged about 5 yards of the 10 he had. I stopped the play, carded the player and then I hear the other boy tell his now carded teammate, "No te preocupes, el es un maricón". I grew up around Spanish speaking parents and grandparents enough to know what that means (something akin to "The ref is gay"). So I looked up, and proceed to tell him in spanish that I knew what he meant and he'd better not say it again. He turned pale to say the least.

In the end, I should have gone over to the coach and explained what happened, I should have carded the boy as well but well, I guess I got flustered. I certainly think he will think twice before uttering such an opinion.

So the nugget is more for the players, but for us, it is how we deal with it. I could have (should have?) carded the player, but the mere fact that he was so surprised might be enough for him to not do it again. I will not ref them again this season, but perhaps we cross paths again. If we do, I wonder what will happen...

Oh it hurts...

2010-08-30T11:26:00.003-04:00

Who said you needed to prep for 7 matches in two days? I will be the first to admit that I did fairly little in terms of physical preparation this summer. I ate poorly, and did not do much in terms of exercise, but this weekend's 7 matches did something for me that I was not expecting, and that was to reinvigorate my desire to get back in shape. So I plan on running some during the week and see if I cannot get back into the form I was prior to the last season ending (and then staying there at least during the long winter off season).

Regarding the actual matches, there was little to throw in. They were good, I had a great time and was happy to be back. Saturday was four U12 matches and Sunday was a bit more challenging in the U14 Boys and U14 Girls brackets of a local tournament.

Sidebar here - During this tournament, they used a system of bonus points to determine seeding into the semifinal round, so in one bracket, Team A and Team B both beat Team C. Team A won 12-0 and Team B won 3-0. When Team A and Team B played each other, they tied 2-2, so who should be the team that goes as the first seed and who is the second seed? Well, due to the weird bonus points that they had for this tournament, both Team A and Team B were deadlocked and went to a PK shootout instead of looking at overall goals scored. Just thought it strange, since 12-0 and 3-0 are two very different results.

Back to the matches, I know my center where I had a full set of ARs was not difficult, but I am also sure that my diagonals were atrocious. I was all over the place, still, it worked out well as I was able to get the offsides calls ok and the fouls seemed to be decent as well. All in all, just glad to be back, but man are my muscles sore today.

Aftermath of the World Cup

2010-07-20T14:12:00.002-04:00

Interesting WC, wasn't it? Congrats to Spain who won it but also to the great moments of the World Cup. The US and the dramatic matches against Slovenia, Algeria and Ghana. To Uruguay for being the surprise team (and for scoring some of the most beautiful goals)and to Ghana for playing the best and most exciting, unscripted match against Uruguay in the quarter finals.

As for the officiating, well, there was a lot to point out. Good and bad. Let's start off with the good. The final: I know most people think that the reds should have come out earlier for the Dutch, but I disagree. I think Mr. Webb did his best to control the match without losing anyone. Should have the chest high challenge been greeted with a red instead of a yellow? Perhaps, but it was early enough to merit a yellow. If that challenge comes with 5 minutes left to play, sure, send him off, but with 70 or so, not so sure in such a high profile match (the highest, actually).

Other good things I liked, the carding early. I really thought that the teams were not expecting it (just like they were not expecting the ball to behave like a beach ball). Uruguay's Lodeiro was carded twice in a span of 10 minutes for two challenges in the first match against France, Germany's Klose was carded twice against Serbia, the second one was for a relatively tame tackle but from behind. After the first couple of matches, the players got it. The negative side to this was the inconsistency between the refs could have been curtailed. Still, it allowed the real game changers (Xabi, Iniesta, Forlan, Messi -sorta- and others) to do what they did best, make the matches entertaining.

The bad was really bad, especially that weekend where they messed up the bracket entirely with the Argentina-Mexico screw-up and the Germany-England mess. First Larrionda's crew fails to award the tying goal to England and then Rosetti's crew awards a goal when Tevez was clearly offside. So my take on this is as follows:

Of the two miscues, the worst is the one with Argentina and Mexico, because offside is the NUMBER ONE priority of the AR. Yes, it was a quick play, but he was a couple of feet offside. I cut the AR in the England match a little (very little) bit of slack because he was where he is trained to be, with the second to last defender. He was a good 12-15 feet off of the goal line and the shot was fast so that he did not get a good glimpse of that is basically a referee blind spot, kind of like the problem with France and Ireland and Mr. Henry's handling, it happened in the center's corner with many people in between the center and the infraction.

So how to fix this? Simple, you have a 4th and 5th official in these types of matches and there is technology available to everyone but the center and the ARs. Well, in the case of the England/Germany match, keep playing and allow the 4th/5th officials to review the play (allow some 30 seconds or so) and the right call would have been made. If there are any infractions/yellow/red cards that occur between the time the goal is being reviewed and the time it is officially a goal, they stand, but so does the goal. It is more important to get it right than to ensure game flow. So allow the game to flow until a decision has been made. Again, it should not take more than 30 seconds to see something like that. Especially at the World Cup or other large event where there are 20 camera angles.

FIFA does not want this because that would mean sacrificing game flow, but it is simple, it is already implemented in these high level matches as the cameras are already there and does not require chip-in-ball technology or the addition of any extra ARs for goal line decisions.

So the naysayers would argue what happens in the case of a goal being scored in the 30 seconds that it takes to make the decision. If it is by the team that scored already but their goal was not counted and was being reviewed, count one of them, the first if it was indeed a goal and if not the second. If in the 30 seconds it takes the other team scores, well, we have a problem. I would hope decisions can be made prior to that happening but that would be something that needs to be addressed. Frankly, it might happen once or twice in the whole history of World Cups. To me, the goal should stand as well and kick off to the team that got scored on second.

Finally, the last thing I want to address is the diving. Do an after the match suspension of the floppers. Ronaldo, the Ivory Coast player that bumped into Kaka, Joan Capdevilla and the entire Italian team (or at least, this guy: http://www.caughtoffside.com/2010/06/15/the-worst-dive-of-the-2010-world-cup-video/) should be suspended after the fact for one match, since they dove and no one did anything to them. Second time, 2 matches, then 4. Eventually, the diving will stop.

Hope to hear your comments and I am looking forward to getting back into the saddle for this coming season.

Another season in the books

2010-06-24T18:52:00.002-04:00

It's that time again to count up the numbers and figure out what and where all of it went. The season was a busy one, with some weeknight matches with the high-school kids and all the weekend work. In total I did 60 matches this season, the most I have done so far. I do not see myself getting to this number any time soon due to the fact that Sunday is when most of the matches are played and now both of my children are in travel, my son playing U11 and my daughter U9. Finding time to ref in between all that is going to be a challenge for me and for my assignor(s). My estimates are that my weekend work is going to come down dramatically, especially when both of my kids are playing away games.

Still, for this season there were 35 centers and 25 ARs. I include the two-man centers in the regular centers (there were three of those). I recall handing out about 10 yellow cards, and I recall 2 red cards (both in the same match, more on that in my next post as it was in the last match of the season). I should have had more matches but I was forced to miss this past weekend's tournament due to travel for my regular job. Still, 60 matches is not something to scoff at and it will be my personal best for some time to come given the reduced time that I will have for the foreseeable future.

I have been asked by a couple of you out there that are thinking about turning this into something more than just an occasional thing, and the possibility is there. You have to be willing to take some of the junk assignments at the beginning or come to the aid of a desperate assignor even when it is not convenient for you, just to get your foot in the door. I did that at the beginning of this season, where I traveled 45 miles out of my way, just to do one match as an AR. Normally, I would have not taken such as assignment, but I guessed that the assignor would notice, realize and be appreciative of the such a sacrifice. I believe it paid off because I was offered more high school matches than I would have thought were normally given to first year refs.

In the end, it all comes down to how much dedication and time you can give. The more you give, the more you get. And even if you do not know your assignor from Adam, it is possible that they notice and reward you for helping them out, or hanging in there, or for being that last gasp help that they so desperately need.

More on my last match and the World Cup in some of my future postings, since there is a break on the local stuff for a couple of months. Till the next time.

How much running does a ref do?

2010-06-08T13:06:00.003-04:00

I read an interesting article stating that a referee doing a 90 minute match is capable of running up to 12 miles in a match, on average. And that is about 5 miles more than what the average field player does in the same amount of time. That is certainly fascinating.

Here is the article:

http://www.cnn.com/2010/HEALTH/06/04/world.cup.referees.fitness/index.html?hpt=C1

Regardless, if you were to tell me that I had to run 5 miles, I would look at you like you had two heads. I do not think I would enjoy it at all, but if you think of it in reffing terms, I am sure that I run that much during some of my 80 minute matches, or at least I am close to that. I do not realize I have run that much because of the fact that my mind is not pondering that, it is preoccupied about where the play is going, how much time is left, can the blue team sub on a corner, is that kid hurt, what is my AR trying to tell me, is that a studs up tackle and many other questions to preoccupy my mind.

I had never thought I covered that much ground. I plan to make it official though at some moment. I want to buy one of those Garmin GPS devices that runners use to track my field coverage and to determine how much running I actually do. If I find one that can double as a countdown watch, then I think we will be in business. If anyone has any suggestions, I would love to hear them.

Redemption Match

2010-06-02T16:35:00.003-04:00

I worked a tournament here over the Memorial Day weekend and it was a good time, with many matches. In all I worked 8 matches, with the two most interesting ones going to the U16 boys that I had on Saturday and Sunday. On Saturday, it was an interesting match because it started out with problems and just never let up. Before the match started, both teams were in white, and the team required to change did not have enough red shirts as some of their players forgot them. I spoke with the other coach who offered to go to blue instead. Ok, so that worked.

But that nice coach that offered to move then turned into Mr. Hyde and was just a beast. He immediately started working me and not liking any call. While his team was more aggressive, if you heard him, their boys were being slaughtered instead of them being the aggressors. On top of it, they were dominating and were just having a hard time punching it in. The keeper kept the other team in for longer than they could be. Finally, they got their first goal with 10 minutes left in the first half on a PK (handling in the box). The play itself was funny because it was a soft lob that floated to a defender who did the worst clearance and it ricocheted off of a couple of body before rolling down the arm of another defender. Ironically, I was one of the only people that saw it (fortunately!).

Two minutes later, an interesting play where white is attacking and there is a pass to a streaking attacker and a defender in hot pursuit. The defender makes a challenge on the attacking player but the ball is 2-3 feet ahead of the challenge. The attacker stumbles but tries to continue, so I allow a play on (but in my head, it was a yellow card because of it being a professional foul). When the keeper scoops the ball up a second later, I call back to the point of the foul, and issue a card to the defender. The coach goes ape nuts over this (and on top of it, all of their parents do too). I guess it is contagious when a coach gets away with it. I went over and explained it to him since he did not seem to grasp the advantage concept too well but then in the second half we had a ton more issues. And it was so hot, I actually started thinking to myself, am I getting it all wrong? Is this guy right and my calls stink? The two ARs backed me up but it shook my confidence. And the team ended up winning by 6, so it was mostly him just being nasty for nastiness sake.

Then on Sunday, I had another U16 boys match that was a potential for a title, if the white team won (not the same white team as Saturday) they would go to the a tiebreaker with another team. One of the ARs after that match asked me if I was a 6 or a 7 because I had done so well with my foul recognition. When I told him I was an 8 he immediately said that I should be looking to upgrade. It certainly helped boost my confidence. Even before the match I was thinking to myself if I was way over my head. Glad to be able to now say that the coach from Saturday was just full of it.

World Cup

2010-05-25T10:49:00.003-04:00

One of the biggest sporting events is almost upon us. It is the month long celebration of the sport we love (or tolerate, at least) and I plan to miss very little of it. I apologize for doing another off-topic post but I promise to add some referee content to make it more kosher. It is just that it is one of those things that happens once in a blue moon and it is an event that the whole world hinges on every play, every goal and in the end, one of the big countries will come out the winners, but I hope against hope that someone unexpected will take the title (not your typical Brazil, Germany or Italy).

What are your expectations for this event? I know I will be looking at the refereeing teams early on to see if I can figure out who is doing a good job. 4 years ago, Horacio Elizondo of Argentina did the first and last matches of the World Cup. My guess is that we will see someone who has one of those impeccable runs just like the teams do and they will have a good final. For some reason I remember the names of two other refs of World Cup finals without having to look them up, Codesal from Mexico did the 1990 World Cup final, and Arphi Filo (sp?) did the 1986 final both featuring Argentina and Germany.

Not that I ever aspire to get to that level, but it is nice to see how the pros do it to then take those techniques and try to apply them (normally unsuccessfully) to the younger games. Let me know what you all see and hopefully we will be talking about a small country (in terms of soccer prowess) taking home the cup. I would love to the US go deep and countries like Uruguay, Paraguay, Ivory Coast or the Swiss make an impact and leave out one or more of the giants in the group phase.

Personally, I think Spain will win as they are just too good, but it is 90 minutes and you have to play great soccer in the knockout phase or you go home. Hope everyone enjoys it. I know I will.

The Acadamy Approach

2010-05-17T17:00:00.003-04:00

For those of you new to the world of travel soccer and reffing in general, there is one thing that seems to have caught on that I would rather not see proliferate as much as it has recently and that is the concept of acadamy travel soccer and the next level of team sponsored soccer.

Let me delve into what exactly I am talking about and then we can go into why I do not like it as much. To begin defining the concept of acadamy soccer and its effects on the reffing world, we start with the local club's requirement starting this last season that all new teams formed would have to use a coach from the only authorized provider of said coaches for the club. This basically means that if you have a group of kids that play well enough where they are a little better than their rec counterparts, they get moved up into travel soccer. The local club has roughly two teams per age group, with some age groups having three or even four teams. That is a lot of kids playing travel soccer.

We have been lucky that my son's team was established before the establishment of "acadamy coaches only" policy so we have a grandfather policy that allows us to remain independant for now. But any other team formed after their age group or any one formed from now on are required to use these coaches (who are for the most part, very knowledgeable and have a keen interest in making sure the kids get better). This rant is not against any one coach or acadamy program because it is the concept and what it breeds that is the problem here, not the coaches themselves.

So what does this have to do with reffing you ask? Well, case in point was this past weekend. I was the center ref on a match between a U13 girls team from the local club and one from somewhere else in the area that was a critical match. It was important to the local club to come out a winner, because they are an acadamy team and have been for quite some time. Truth be told, for U13 girls, they play well, but evidently this season, the results have not gone their way. I looked at their standings after doing my Saturday and Sunday matches (I centered them on Saturday and on Sunday I did an AR) and the truth was in the pudding. Before the weekend they had played 4 matches and had drawn 4 matches, 0-0 and three 1-1 results. Since they are an acadamy team, they are expected to be atop of their division. It was suggested and hinted to me that this team deserved some results to come their way. It was not a clear cut request to assist the team with my calls, it was more of a shadow of a doubt that it would be something helpful.

It certainly did not work out for them because they were playing the top team in the division and were soundly beat out by them 4-0 (hey, at least they did not tie). I am at odds as to whether I should report this as I am not sure it was all that clear if it was a passing comment stating they would love a win or if it was more of a comment that required action on my behalf. Obviously there was no helping the girls even if I wanted to because I could not erase 4 goals with creative reffing. One or two goals perhaps, just ask the Spanish and Italian teams in the 2002 World Cup against South Korea. That was creative reffing and evidence of an agenda to aid the local country into a part of the World Cup that they had no business being in, but 4 goals is too much.

Anyway, this all boils down to the fact that Acadamy soccer is focused on results, much more so than development of the players. At the U10-U14 level, I think that while there should be some consisntancy on having your starters play the same position, every once in a while, shake things up because it is still developmental and it helps the kids adapt to a different scenario. Also, focus on making them better players, not on the results of the match at hand. Everything I have seen about Acadamy soccer is all about the result, and it makes sense if the parents are shelling out a ton of money to pay these coaches but the kids do not deserve it to be this way. Not sure if there is a solution or if it makes sense to restructure the leagues to refocus somehow on other things than just the result of the match.

So to wrap it up, it sucks because all of this in the background leads to having one of the parents and the acadamy coach (who I do not care for too much) to come and hint/suggest/attempt to influence/etc. my decisions on the field because of their needs for results. Sorry, guys, but I don't dance like that.

High School experience

2010-04-14T10:14:00.002-04:00

I was so worked up about doing a dual. I was jittery, nervous, and did not know how to react. But it is done with and in the end, there is nothing that terrible about it. It really boils down to this, you call your quadrant and the other one calls his/her quadrant. Stay within the offside lines of the team, act more like an AR than a center and basically stuff in the middle of the field either does not get called or gets called twice.

But here are the specifics. I arrived at 5:25 for a 6pm JV kickoff. I got to the field and it was everything that the guy at refblog.com always harps about. Hard barely grassy field, long and narrow, like football fields are. The other ref had emailed me earlier stating that he had a 4pm match somewhere else and was not going to show up until right at kickoff. I did not know the JV procedure, but I did collect the rosters from each team and then checked the girls in.

I started the game and about 4-5 minutes into the match, I see the other guy on the field. I yell to the ladies that there were now two whistles on the field and to play on. I had started my watch, but since there was a high school scoreboard, I let it guide me only to find out that at 2 minutes remaining, they did not count it down anymore because it is the ref's determination of when it ends, so in the first half, they probably played another minute or two because I did not know if it would end by itself when the 2 minutes were up or if I had to end it. When we got to at least 3 minutes after, I blew the whistle for the first half to end.

I got to meet the other ref, we chatted and I admitted that I had not done any matches before under this regime but he said that it just takes a little adapting and that most JV games are not really competitive, that the games everyone comes to watch is that actual high school matches and not the younger kids.

The game itself was interesting, more contact than I would have liked, but the other ref basically called nothing. I called 3 fouls in the second half and 2 in the first. I did not attempt to make all the hand signals but I did call out what I saw, for the sake of the coaches. But in the second match where I was an AR, the center only made the 'stop the clock' gesture after each goal was scored, other than that there is no stopping of the clock they said.

Back to the matches, both were very similar, the JV game was won by the local side who played more controlled soccer and started the second half by getting scored on in the first couple of minutes of the second half and then turned it around for a 2-1 win. In the second match, the home team scored in the first minute of the second half and then went on to lose 4-2.

The last impression I had was the fact that we had the whole camaraderie thing going on, with the starters getting their names called out, the whole national anthem, it really did feel like a world cup match, at least this first time. Interesting since I had never done it quite like this before.

So all in all, it is still soccer, just a little quirkier than I am used to, a little rougher than I expected and more people in the stands than just parents. Next week I do the same school but on the boys side, and I have been warned to buckle up for even a bigger ride. We'll see about that.

It has been a while

2010-03-11T10:57:00.002-05:00

And I want to apologize to everyone, I had not realized the length of time that had elapsed since my last post. I know I always promise to bring up the seminar and more details around it and I might, but it really was not that thick enough.

This past weekend, I opened the season for spring with an invitation tournament. In all, I did 8 matches, 3 centers and 5 AR positions. They were for U13 and U14 boys. Decent level of competition since only halfway decent teams get in. My son's team got invited in their U10 category and were promptly blown out of the first two matches. They did manage to tie their last match, but not the start of the season they were expecting.

As for me, I have been getting myself in shape with exercising in the morning for about 30 minutes or so. But no running and that is something I am going to have to change. I was VERY tired after match #4 on Saturday. Sunday was a bit better, but still, I needed a healthy dose of Advil when I was done.

There was not much to tell about the matches in general, except that on Saturday, as an AR, there was a situation where a player got hurt. Ball was close to my position so the center told me to do the drop ball instead of him. Never had that happen before, and if I am the center, I would handle a drop ball, not the AR, who has a more important function, offside. Anyone ever have that? What do you think?

On Sunday, I arrived at my field 30 minutes before kick off and so did the other AR. Our center arrived 3 minutes before kick off and was angry at me for doing the coin flip. I did not want to start an argument with the center since we were going to be a crew for the 4 matches, but I really wanted to tell him to be a little bit earlier next time. Everything after that went fine. We even had one of those, we both saw the same thing from different angles and complemented each other on the non-call, but it irked me at the beginning to get slapped on the wrist for something that I should not have.

These next 3 weekends include more tournaments, so there will be a lot of soccer and a lot of material for the blog. If I ever get to post it, well, that is a different story!

Shirt pulling

2010-01-21T16:00:00.002-05:00

This is my number one pet peeve now. I saw this during a tournament where my son played this past weekend. It was up in Maryland and there was a mix of teams from Maryland, DC and Virginia. It seemed that most of the teams from Maryland used this tactic to balance out the lack of speed in terms of defenders keeping up with attackers. I saw one breakaway that the attacker basically got dragged back by a well employed shirt pull and it just reminded me how unfair and hard to detect some of that is. This is my first resolution for 2010, to catch and card more of that. And I want to make sure that my ARs see that. Easier said than done, but at least I am going to give it a try.

High School vs. USSF Rules

2010-01-13T13:12:00.001-05:00

I plan to delve deeper in this category as I was in training this past weekend to begin doing high school soccer. I received the rule book and the first thing that jumps out at me is the fact that you can see the philosophy of one vs. the other. USSF is written with a certain audience in mind whereas the NFHS rulebook is geared towards the same people but with details galore, covering many more minute details that the USSF book leaves to common sense for the most part (or lack thereof).

My idea is to give it a more profound breakdown of some of the interesting things that contrast between the two, but I wanted to throw it out there that things just were so different between the two that it does not seem like it was the same sport.

Cool Runnings

2010-01-11T22:13:00.002-05:00

Oy it's cold in the Northern Virginia area! To think that I was able to take a vacation where I could lie on the beach and laugh at the snow people were enduring here only to return and the day after I am back, I was called into action thanks to the O40 women's league I reffed a couple of matches for last year.

But this time, I was not prepared for it. My match started at 3pm. I arrived at 2:30 and saw that the ladies were putting up the nets on the goals. It was cold, around 34 F and it was ok until the wind started swirling up. The field was a turf field on top of a hill of sorts, and how the wind blew.

The match started 10 minutes late because all the players were basically in their cars with the motors running in the parking lot until enough people got out to start the match. It is funny to see how some women, like those closer to 60 years old were out and warming up while those closer to 40 were in their cars and thinking "What am I doing here?"

We did 2 40 minute halves and by the end of the match, I was frozen to the bone. I mean I was cold. It was almost 5pm, dark, and the temperature had dropped to about 29 F or so. It had been a decent match, where white scored 2 first half goals, and with 15 minutes to play, blue pulled one back and then attacked to get the equalizer but failed to so. Kudos to the ladies, it was a decent match, but they did not really need me as I called three fouls tops.

However, as I was about to leave, the second match did not have their ref yet. Even though this league pays well, I was in no desire to stay and do another match. I do have a policy though that unless I have to be somewhere else after a match, I hang around until the ref for the next match shows up. Of course, they always do but it is the right thing to do in case they do. Well, he didn't this time.

So I did the second match. We did 30 minutes because it was bitterly cold with the wind. Not sure what the wind chill was or how to calculate it but it was a good 15-20 miles and hour and gusts every so often made it worse. To tell you that in the first half, I did it with my coat on. Side note: I was wearing a t-shirt, an Under Armor compression shirt and my blue, red, black and yellow jerseys on for the first match.

When one of the ladies said that they were confused and almost passed me the ball thinking I was one of their teammates, I replied "Don't worry, I will take it off soon" and she replied "You have no idea how long I have waited to hear you say that!" It was certainly funny.

Anyway, in the second match, I did have a lot more work, there were two ladies, one on each side that were somewhat enforcers and no one really got by them. So I had to call some more fouls and there were a couple of complaints with the balls going out of touch, but it seemed they were gaming me instead of actually thinking I had missed the call.

And I called a penalty, the keeper diving for the ball, took out the attacker, so it was all in all a better game. The final there was 2-2 but good stuff indeed because their level of play was more than decent given the fact that it was the first games of the season for each team and that it was in such demaning weather. Hats off, ladies.

Quick note

2009-11-28T18:07:00.003-05:00

Happy Thanksgiving everyone.

Without going into too much detail about the recert class, I wanted to let you all know that I passed with a 72 out of 75. And I still have an issue with two of the ones that I got wrong, but that is neither here nor there. It all boils down to the fact that I guess I will be reffing again in 2010 and you may have to put up with me for another season. Lucky you.

Of Tournaments and Fauna

2009-11-24T10:01:00.004-05:00

Interesting stories from this week’s tournament. I will break it down in three distinct stories: a) The Tiny Ref, b) The Late Ref and c) The Non Ref

So for starters, this was a tournament weekend, a closeout weekend as the season is winding down to a close. There are a couple of tournaments scattered throughout the DC area, and this one was fortunately, closest to home. In the past, the assignor who gives me matches for this tournament (and the others that he assigns for) has always used me as a backup ref at the site where my son's team plays. And I have never had to actually sub in for a ref. I was once given a match by the site coordinator back in March of this year, but the assigned ref showed up in the nick of time. But I digress...

The Tiny Ref

As you can imagine, this pertains to a ref that did my son's U10 matches. He was shorter than some of the kids on either team. I am not sure if he knew all the rules or if he had a whistle, because he really only used it for the kick-offs and then for half time. I do believe he did not call a single foul until 3 minutes before the end of the match and it was a questionable call in my eyes. But the fact that he must not have been over 13 made it the most interesting thing. I am a firm believer in having referees train but during tournaments, parents paid a decent chunk of change to have their kids play special matches, and though he was not terrible, he certainly did not give the impression he really knew what was going on so of course, parents were not happy. And in the end, if parents are not happy, they take their tournament dollars elsewhere. I saw a lot of frustration over the reffing in general because of the inconsistancy of the whistle blowing. My guess is that if you do not like the officiating, you will probably not be back next year for that tournament. And some of the blame I have to lay it on the assignor who may have blindly given the matches to a 13 year old.

The Late Ref

On Sunday, I had an early start. The first match was to begin at 7:30am. It was cold and fairly dark still when I arrived at the field at 7:05am. The other AR arrived with me and we began chatting. The fields looked terrible. They were Bermuda grass that I later found out, turns yellow and basically looks dead upon first frost of the season and that is why they looked bad. To top it off, there were several field markings, all in while, against the pale yellow of the Bermuda grass, which made an AR’s job all that more complicated.

By 7:20, our center had not arrived, so while the other AR checked the teams in, I ran over to the ref tent and let them know that we may need another ref for our match in 10 minutes. 5 minutes later we get someone coming over. He introduces himself and he is not the scheduled ref, but rather the backup. While we are standing there, he does manage to confirm my suspicion that he is rather cocky and eccentric by some of the comments he makes. He said things like “This level is so easy compared to the semi-pro that I normally do, but oh well…” (we were about to do a U15 boys Elite flight level match, so it should not be that easy).

Right before the start of the match, another ref lumbers on to the field and we come to find out that he was the ref that was supposed to be here to center the match originally. He and the eccentric ref get into a little discussion and in the end, eccentric tells him “I do not care if you got here late. It is my match now because it is no longer your match. You can watch the match from the sideline or the ref tent, but get off my field.” And here I thought we were a community of brothers.

So the match starts and the eccentric ref is one of those chatty ones, with strange calls, late calls and everything else we are taught not to be. He becomes the star of the match and at the end, when we go over the final score and the cards, he states he gave 5 yellow cards during the match. I saw only one.

For the next match, the shunned referee comes on to the field as my AR, still complaining about the match that he was supposed to center. But I notice one weird thing, he did not have a US badge on his uniform, but rather a FIFA badge. I asked him if he was still certified (his badge had a small 98 on the bottom, so I thought he was not still certified for FIFA but I had to ask). He said he was from Cameroon and had received his FIFA badge there and worked the African Cup of Nations as an AR (I could not verify this on Wikipedia as they did not list the AR’s names, only who centered each match and I am not going to dig that much further). Still, I am not sure he should be wearing a 10 year old FIFA badge instead of the current US badge.

The Non Ref

This one was more entertaining than anything else, but while on my break I was watching the action unfold on two fields when all of a sudden, one of the ARs starts to wiggle his flag like crazy to indicate that something was wrong. Then I look over and a deer was sprinting across the field on the half where play was not occurring. I do not think that the center on that field even realized since it happened so quick. Then the deer leapt over some chairs and bound up the hill to the other field, where she squeezed in between the goalpost and the keeper (who again, did not realize until the deer was long gone) before jumping over a ditch, in between cars and over a fence to disappear into the woods behind the fields. Not often do you get that type of close up with wildlife when reffing (unless you consider some of the parents wildlife).

This coming week I am doing my 2010 certification and hope to have some more information on what we are going to be focusing on this coming year. Come to think of it, I have not had to do the certification for three seasons now, because I received my in August 2008, which already gave me the 2009 badge.

In the coming weeks I will have that as well as the ref seminar in January and a high school training session. So this winter should not be a quiet one.

Bad Clubs

2009-11-20T00:17:00.002-05:00

I am not sure how much I want to say about this, but I have been mulling over the fact that there are a couple of clubs in the area that are just bad clubs. The coaches, parents, and most everyone else associated with the clubs are just mean, crummy people, or they act that way on Sunday at least.

For the most part, whenever I do matches for these clubs, I know I am going to have to be extra cautious, and that they will not be happy with the performance of the referee squad unless their team comes out ahead. These two clubs are fairly similar in location and in general are probably worse off economically than most of the other areas.

I have had my fair share of mean people, but this is more of a systematic, endemic thing going on with these two clubs. It is almost everyone, it is almost like they feed off of each other. I am sure that if I were to talk to some of them alone, they would seem fine, but when they arrive at the field and everyone that they know are all yelling and screaming at the kids, officials, coaches, etc. it is similar to mass hysteria.

Again, this is not a rant on the socio-economic situation of the clubs, but I wonder if that has something to do with it. I hope to pick up this rant later, I want to see where we can go with it but it is late now and I am tired. Talk to you all soon.

But it is so nice out

2009-11-17T16:40:00.003-05:00

The weather dealt me a delayed blow. In the most lucrative weekend of the year (for regular season soccer), I was dealt the equivalent of a snake eyes. The assignor pays a premium for working the playoffs of one of the rec leagues. During the regular season, those matches are not in high demand, but if you are willing to do them, he then rewards you at the end of the season with matches that pay very well for the playoffs. For 70 minute matches, you would receive $50 for a center and $30 for an AR. I had 3 centers and one AR, so I was looking at an extra $180.

It rained Tuesday through Friday and on Saturday, they make the decision to close the grass fields and not the turf fields. Sure enough I was on grass. To make matters worse, it turned out to be a decent day. Sunday was even better, but I come to find out that since the semi-finals were not played on Saturday, there would be no finals for Sunday either. So I did not get a chance to work either day. Still, I am not going to complain too much as I have to go by and collect my check from the assignor tonight and I have a good idea of how much will be in there, and it is decent to say the least.

This next weekend, I am doing the last tournament of the season. Last year it should have been called the icycle tournament as it was really cold, and there were some matches scheduled at 7:30am! This season, I am a backup ref on Saturday and Sunday I am working the U15 boys and U14 girls. We will see how all that goes but it should be fun.

Follow up from last week

2009-11-09T12:32:00.002-05:00

I still have to sort out some things from this past weekend, it was another good weekend for some decent soccer but I did want to follow up from last weekend on my comment about my son's match.

My son plays U10 travel and many times, I am asked to help as an AR in his matches. The match was a blowout and at one point with the match at 6-0 or something like that and me perched right in front of the visiting team's bench, my son's team plays a ball from defense that makes it past all their defenders (who were on the attacking half). There was one boy on my son's team perched at midfield and when the pass (or clearance) goes by, he takes off. He was clearly onside as he was right behind the midfield line and the ball passed him before he made his run, so I held my flag down. SIDE NOTE: As a non-paid AR, I asked the center if he wanted me to flag things as normal, as if I were a real AR or just help with the out-of-bounds stuff. He said to do the full thing.

When the kid makes the run for the ball, I start running down the line and from my back I hear, "Hey Ref that was..." It was the coach of the other team. I could not believe he was giving me lip about my non-offside call. So as I am running away from him, I look back and say, "Please coach, do not give me any of that" in a tone that was not very civil.

When the play finishes I run back and expect to hear a ton of "he was clearly off-side" and "how can you be an AR" etc. so I said before he could say anything, "I do not want to hear it" to which he answers, "but that was a great call, all I wanted to tell you is that you did very well in holding the flag down".

I need to stop being such a hot head. Another lesson learned.

Too bad I can't make them all cry

2009-11-04T10:41:00.002-05:00

This past weekend I worked both days with interesting stories on each day, mostly anecdotal stuff, nothing really hard core ref related, at least on Saturday. On Sunday (in my next post), there is more juicy ref content.

Saturday I was slated to work 3 matches, U12 and U10 boys in the local rec league. Not particularly complicated matches, but the interesting thing about rec matches is that the parents are always keeping score and that the disparity in the level of play is always something to consider since you want people to have fun but you have to be mindful that the really good players are going to stand out...

First story of the day was that I seemed to have a knack for making the boys cry. In the first match, one team has a breakaway and a defender runs stride by stride with the attacker and is yelling at him like a marauding Viking all the way down. The attacker does not flinch and scores, but after the goal, I told the boy that he cannot yell to attempt to distract the attacker and that in a regular match that would be a yellow card.

I am not sure if he misunderstood or if maybe I was not age-appropriate in my language (though my 10 year old son would have understood) but he immediately looked at me and started balling. I had to explain to the coach what I said to the boy and he did not return to the field till the second half. And without incident, so at least it was not that bad.

In the second match, there were two terribly mismatched teams. One was very good, with 2-3 players that could have easily played travel and the other was one that barely had the basic notion of what soccer was. On the latter team, there was one child who knew one thing, attack the ball, get the ball and the concept of not fouling in the process was somewhat fuzzy. I counted 5 fouls from him in the first half. In the second half, with him team down 3-1, he really started laying it on thick. When his foul count approached double digits, I told him I had just about had enough of his fouling (and in hindsight, I should have talked to him sooner) and then when he fouled again, I asked the coach to sub him out since this league does not permit yellow or red cards unless something terrible happens. He was subbed and started tearing up as he walked off the field. Fortunately, with only 3 minutes left in the match, he did not return.

For the last match of the day, I did not have any crier, so at least I had that going for me, but seriously, I have to make sure that I choose a lighter tone when addressing children. I guess I have that personality that can come off as gruff and the boys did not respond well to it. Another lesson learned.

As a side note, on the last match, it felt like we regressed into medival times or something similar. One the yellow team there were two boys with distinctly strange names. One boy was almost my height (5'9") and his name was Thor. Yes, as in Odin's son. And then there was another boy named Augustus. Nothing interesting about the match, but the names served as some comic relief as the rain started to come down towards the end of the match.

In my next installment, I will describe another learning experience I had in my son's travel match with the other team's coach.

Weather permitting

2009-10-29T10:22:00.003-04:00

It has been a rough time for soccer in the DC area. It seems that it is wet on the weekends. I suspect that in mid November, we will still be making up some of the matches that have been suspended this season.

I have reached another first, the suspension of a match in mid play. It was the 12 noon match of a U13 travel boys and it was raining at a steady clip. I left home around 11:20 and got to the field at 11:35 thinking that the match would be called off because of the rain. But to my amazement, the match prior to mine was being played. The field was grass and not turf, so that made it more interesting. On top of that, the field I come to find out had just been aerated so it had a lot of things going against it.

So I walk out to the field and I am already soaking wet, there are indicators that there will be a little pool or two soon and the field looks bad. One of the coaches wanted to play the other was reluctant but said that this match was a postponed game from a couple of weeks ago, so to please, please play it. I had the issue that I did not want to tear up the field but it seemed that I was outnumbered (although I know that I was the final authority on it).

The game was not good. Sloppy play, sloppy passing, sloppy field conditions. The blue team was 10 times better than the yellow team and they got a goal from their star player #53 early but after that, it was all ugly. One player on yellow was adamant on telling me where I missed all the calls. Halfway through the first half he slide tackles from behind (and I did tell the kids that slide tackling was risky given the conditions) so he gave me a present to calm him down, a yellow with a good chewing out as well.

In the end, he did finish the match but the only reason that happened was because I had to suspend it with 12 minutes left when we started looking more like water polo rather than soccer. Lucky for him I guess. But it was wet all around for me and we all know how much I love reffing in the rain!

Interesting call

2009-09-23T14:56:00.002-04:00

I am not going to bore you with the details of some of the games I have been assigned lately, a lot of U13-U14 girls and boys matches that are either very light or overly aggressive. But mostly, U13 girls, just moved into a large field, is like watching paint dry, they move the ball well enough, there is little contact and goals (rare as they are) are only scored within the 6 it seems. It has to be my least favorite age group.

There is one call that I will bring up during my center of a U15 girls match. The defender has the ball on the left flank and pressured by an attacker. The defender is facing her own goal and a teammate towards the penalty spot is calling for the ball. She passes it to her but then the keeper tells the teammate to back off and then proceeds to collect the ball with her hands. I blow my whistle as a passback but the gold team swarms me saying it was not intentional. And I had to think about it for an extra second. The intention to pass to the general vicinity of the keeper was clear, though she was probably not the intended target at the time of the pass, but I have to think full well that the keeper knew she was not allowed to pick it up. So in so many words, I explained it to the girls.

I knew I made the right call when my AR backed me up, but even more so when the coach of the team that was penalized did as well.

I have a couple of more stories from these last two weekends, just not enough time to detail it all out just now.

Three Week Recap

2009-09-12T20:43:00.002-04:00

Week 1

U13 and U14 boys on Saturday. Games are being played on a turf field with marking for soccer, football, lacrosse and others given the fact that there were white, yellow, blue and red/orange lines on the ground. The matches were nothing spectacular, but it was interesting that I called a PK on one of the matches I was the center and mistakenly used a football extra point line instead of the PK spot. The kick still went in, so no big deal, but still, something to learn. Also, on another match, the team was using yellow for the goalkeeper, and so we needed to change to another color, but one of the ARs had no other color. Not a good start for him.

Sunday was just U15 girls, nothing special there.

Week 2

U 15 boys on Saturday, very well played games, but one club's parents were obnoxious to the point of no return. As an AR in one of the matches that they lost, they gave me hell for not calling an offsides which I saw as onside. But their comments were to the tune of, "What do you expect when he has sunglasses". Like that is going to make a big difference, but yet, it lead me to realize that when you are doing the AR with the parents involved, it does not pay to carry a conversation with them as they can turn on you.

Week 3

The most boring two ARs I have done in a long time. I do not think I had to actually run at any time, just trot. Painful.

Back to the field

2009-08-27T12:41:00.002-04:00

It is that time again, when the pre-season tournaments abound and everyone is getting ready for some soccer. I received my assignments for this Saturday and Sunday, they are U14 boys and U14 and U19 girls. Eight matches in total, 5 as AR and 3 as center. No complaints there. I will only be able to see my son's first match unfortunately and if he gets to the final, perhaps see that one as well.

As for the matches and the team I am getting, I do not know them that well, so we will have to wait and see what we get. I am re-reading the USSF Laws of the Game as I normally do before the start of the season to make sure I have things down correctly.

Minor update

2009-08-24T14:03:00.002-04:00

Nothing too insteresting this weekend, there was a Saturday set of friendlies my son was participating in, and they were using older kids as referees. I volunteered to help out but there was no need. The only thing I wish these kids would have done better is to stay closer to the play and to blow their whistle louder. No one was sure if the ball was out, or what the calls were. But in the end there was little else to tell them, if someone had asked. I am not sure that they were registered refs to begin with, but it was all for friendlies and in the end it was just a warm up for the season.

But next week is looking good, I have a bunch of ARs and centers coming up, 8 for this coming weekend. U19, U13 and U14. Should be a good time. More to come.

Away for a while

2009-08-13T01:20:00.002-04:00

Not much to report on the refereeing front. To tell you the truth, I have not missed it that much. But in a couple of weeks, I return to the action with a tournament and that should be a good indication of how the season will go. I will fill you in as it happens. These last couple of months have been good though without soccer reffing to worry about, but the season is slowly approaching. My son plays in a couple of tournaments prior to the start of the regular season and the following weekend, I will get to see the matches and critique our fellow referees (hopefully on how well they did).

Second Season in the books

2009-07-07T21:49:00.002-04:00

Though technically, the end of the season is not until the end of July, for all purposes here, I am ending the season. I have a document where I keep all my matches that list time, date, location and other particulars to be able to say with some degree of certainly how many matches I have done at any given time. I also have a column for how much I am making for each match. That then gets summed up in another column. Once a check comes in, I note it and deduct it from the sum. Well, today the number between the payments per match and that of how much I have been paid is zero, so I am closing out the season.

I have a couple of season tournaments that I may be doing, but there is not much time to spare, in late August the season starts again, and I have to recertify before the end of the season, so there should be a lot going on. More on those topics in later posts.

For today, I want to give out some rough numbers on the second season and hopefully come to some conclusions and comparisons to the first.

Number of matches refereed: 52
Centers: 33
ARs: 19

I did most of my reffing with the local league here, and with my son in travel (as well as my daughter now dangerously close to entering that as well) I would say that for the time being, doing just the local club matches should be fine. Getting these many matches certainly kept me in shape, and I made some extra cash to help with these lean financial times. And I think I did pretty well doing what I needed to do for the good of the game.

I am going to see about setting goals for myself closer to the start of the new season, which could be a successful recert, aim for a Grade 7 upgrade, or help out more with other leagues, etc. I will let you know once I know exactly what that goal or goals are.

For now, it is some time to get back to work, as my day job has been brutal, and the kids. Enjoy them while they still want to be with their father. Reffing takes a back seat to that, any time.

Updating on a newer machine

2009-06-25T23:05:00.002-04:00

Before I go off on my soccer related incursion, I wanted to comment that I am writing this entry on a machine I put together that is running the beta version of Windows 7. It is really cool, fast and basically everything Vista should have been.

Ok, back to soccer. I had wanted to write up after the last match of the regular season and that final weekend where I had 5 matches, but I could not find the time with work being just unreal, so I am going to have to write about the two last weeks together and basically one specific thing, penalty kicks. In my two seasons, I had never had a game where I was reffing go to PKs and I wanted to get that out of the way.

On Saturday of the regular season, in the rec league, the U14 girls that I was reffing as an AR went to PKs on a 1-1 match. It was the postseason so they had to have a winner. In this contest, I was asked to work the center circle, so basically, I would coordinate the kickers and make sure that they were taking their turns, at the ready and backup for the scoring, just in case. It was fun, but little did I know that the following week would be more still.

This past weekend, I did a father's day tournament and when I got my assignments, it was a doozy, U19 Boys. I was thrilled as it meant that they would be good and there would be some decent action. I did six matches for the tournament, two centers and four ARs, but boy did I have an awesome experience at the center on Sunday.

Before arriving at the field, I knew that I had one of the finals for the U19 boys. As it turned out, I had the D1 final, and the teams knew each other well, had played twice already in the regular season and there was no love lost between the teams.

To make matters worse, I was still trying to overcome the experience from a couple of weeks ago when all the parents wanted to eat me up. One thing about this tournament was that many players at this age group were already men and they were playing in the U19 boys rec championship because it was much more financially viable than playing travel (or so I was told by a couple of people at the tournament). So in essence, these kids were probably just as good as the kids that did travel, but just did not have the means to pay for travel soccer.

Anyway, the game went well. I called it a little tighter than I would have (on Saturday I had one center say that at this age group he called practically nothing, and on Sunday, I had another center say that at this age group she called practically everything, so I went with something in the middle). And the orange team was far more physical than the Blue team. But the other thing that I did for them was to say out loud when I was not going to call a foul or call handling. I would yell "No foul, play on" or "No hands, play on" so that they would immediately focus back on the match and not at trying to get my attention to see if I had seen what they would be complaining about. This lowered their whining a bit (I got a lot more whining on my Saturday center and thought this would help, it did).

Blue scored first with 4 minutes left in the first half on a free kick and then Orange tied it up 4 minutes in to the second half. It truly was a great match. In the end they went to PKs and I froze when I was going to do the coin toss. I could not remember the procedure, so what I did was give Orange the chance to call it and they won the toss, so I let them choose to either kick first or second. Orange had the better goalie and they thought that they were better when it came to taking the PKs but Blue only had one stopped by the keeper while Orange missed two that hit the goalposts and out.

And finally, in my last center of my second season I had my PKs as a center. I am sure that I will rue most of those next however many PK shootouts I will have as a ref, but I certainly enjoyed this one. It was a great match played by two great teams and I was smack dab in the middle of it, so I got that going for me.

Funny note

2009-06-10T10:27:00.002-04:00

One thing I forgot from yesterday's rant, and that was that just for the second time in my reffing career (truly not that long), I was hit with the ball. The first time was back in January when the ladies league was in play and the ball basically grazed me.

This time, it was a full on clearance from one of the defenders in last match of the day that hit me halfway in the chest, shoulder and upper right arm area. One of the boys made a funny comment, "Handball ref!" He wasn't kidding!

Questioning my performance

2009-06-09T11:14:00.003-04:00

A tale of two days. Saturday was great from a complements standpoint and terrible from a physical standpoint. Sunday was just the opposite.

Saturday I did a couple of hard U14 centers and an AR as well. It was great, the first match was a good one between the two leading U14 teams. The first goal was scored 60 seconds in, where my AR was in the perfect position to see the ball trickle in to the goal. From my angle it did not look like it went all the way in, but he had the perfect angle, so that was good. Then with 3 minutes left and the teams tied at 1, we get a clear trip in the box and the home team slammed it home for a 2-1 win. I got a lot of compliments from both teams.

Second match was a 3-2 where I had the chance to call a goal on the line as an AR, and then with maybe 30 seconds left in the match, the team down 3-2 ties it up but the player was offside by half a step, if the one who had created the play had shot it himself, it would have been legit, but he passed it to the wide open (and in the offside position) attacker and that invalidated the goal. Not too happy from the players or fans, but the center thanked me for making the right call.

Finally the third match was a 6-0 blowout, but I got compliments because it was still a competitive game and because there was one player on the purple team that lost that did not have all his marbles. He was somewhat of a loose cannon. He would go in late, run his mouth and just generally make it a sour event for those around him. I spoke to him and the defender from the other team that were jawing it out to cut it out or get a card each. They shut up after that.

At the end of that match my knees were absolutely killing me, so I thought that Sunday was going to be bad, but I got up and felt fine Sunday. However, it was another story in terms of the matches.

The first one was an 8-1 blow out but the team losing had a coach that out of nowhere started yelling that his boys were getting fouled every time they ran to the ball. They were getting outplayed actually. And on top of it, #12 on Blue kept flopping, so the one time he does get fouled, I hesitated and the coach was on me. So I had to tell him that the reason I hesitated was that he had flopped the first couple of times and that it was difficult for me to determine if it was a foul or not given the history. He did not like that at all. Lesson #1, keep those opinions to yourself. I gained nothing by telling the coach and others that I thought #12 was flopping. Tell them that you were waiting to see if there was an advantage or something else.

The second match I had been warned was going to be a doozy and it was. An undefeated team going against another good team. The U11 boys had me on my toes. The first two goals were for the gold team that was undefeated. Then they scored again, and the purple team wanted an offside call that I just didn't see. I was not in the best position and from my angle the attacker came from behind the defender, but boy oh boy did the coach and parents from that side yell and scream bloody murder.

In the second half, the purple team gets one goal back and then with 10 minutes left, they get another. With the score 3-2, gold is attacking and there is a possible foul inside the box, I did not see a foul but because I was not in the best position. I was running down the middle and that angle did not give a clear view. I cannot call a foul if I do not see it. The problem was that there was one purple defender shielding me from the actual contact. So I did not call it. Lesson #2: Try and go wider, that way you have better angles across the field of play and can help with offsides as well to boot. Something that would have certainly helped with this match.

Then with a minute left, purple corner, it floats in and purple and gold jump for the ball. Purple had a striaght jump while gold defender came at an angle. Gold gets his head on the ball but also makes contact with purple. I did not see a foul but the parents of purple sure did (and btw, where was the team liason that each team is supposed to have to calm parents down? I hate having to tell parents to shut up.)

In the counter attack, gold scores again and they win 4-2 but I just did not know what to make of my performance. I want to improve, but at the same time, it was almost like I did not want to do it anymore, it was not worth it...

Much ado about nothing

2009-06-02T13:06:00.002-04:00

No idea if the title is spelled correctly, so my apologies if it is. On to the fun stuff from this weekend, oh wait, there was not much as my three matches for Satuday were cancelled out. And I did not have anything lined up for Sunday as I had a prior commitment. I found out that the league I was supposed to ref in does not have any rain days built in (at least for this season) so those games are lost completely. Oh well.

I did get a chance to see my son play and it is funny that I almost reffed the game as the actual ref showed up 5 minutes to kick off. It was in a weird place, not your typical park and it was out of the way for us as the visiting team (over an hour away from home) but the fact that he did not show up until right before kick off really indicated that he was also having trouble finding the place. Regardless, it turned out ok. He did not have the proper equipment, but it was good enough. At least he did figure out to change his shirt color when he saw that one team was wearing yellow. The one thing that really kills me about my fellow refs is situations like this, but this person switched to blue when he saw yellow on red (and one goalie was black while the other was green, so it turned out to be perfect).

In the other field, in a U11 match that was much more intense, the ref also had yellow playing white and he was wearing yellow. He stopped play about 5 minutes into his match and went to his bag. I thought to myself, well, better late than never, but when he returned to the field, he was carrying flags for volunteer ARs and still the same yellow jersey. Not professional at all. I have to insist, bring at least 2 colors (yellow and black) so at least you have the possibility of not screwing it up, with 3 you can play without any issue and only conflict with goalkeepers. At a certain point, you have to realize that you are no longer reffing rec leagues anymore and that you either should take it seriously or not do it at all. Maybe some day, I will become uncaring, but still, it is about doing a job right.

So have at least 3 shirts (yellow and black for sure, and if you do not have any other, get green as there are few teams that use that color). Most teams are Blue, Red or White (in that order, from my experience. And have some fun out there, but with the proper attire.

Heat of the moment

2009-05-26T22:08:00.000-04:00

And hot it was this weekend. Six matches overall, 2 on Satuday (a U10 girls and a U9 boys that were nothing spectacular). I did almost red card a boy in the U9 match. Two fouls both fairly similar and heavy handed on the same attacker. I carded him on the first and probably should have done the same on the second but they were already down 4-1 and the second one was a penalty on top of it, so I could not bring myself to yellow card the player again.

On Sunday, things picked up a little more. Two U13 girls matches, one as a center and one as an AR. The center one started off very interestingly as the blue team attacked and had a goal I had to call back because they literally ran over the keeper. They then scored first with a little less than 4 minutes to play in the first half but in the span of 2-3 minutes, yellow got two goals and then sealed it with a 3-1 win.

In the U11 boys matches I had that afternoon, I could tell that they were starting to try and play the ref, as one boy seemed to have missed a shot as a defender went to challange him and he went down yelling he was hurt, etc. and that the defender had fouled him. I had to tell him that I did not see a foul unfortunately. A couple of minutes later, with the game 2-1, the same attacker and defender go at it but this time I see the defender take out the legs in the box, PK for white who is down 2-1. The keeper gets a couple of fingers on the ball and it hits the crossbar and falls into his hands. On the counter, the blue team gets a PK of their own (stupid -as in excessive- foul right on the line of the box and they do convert, to make it 3-1 and game over.

All in all, some of the benefits of this tournament were that we got drinks and food included and that we were paid right after our last match. My total was just shy of $200. Not bad with these benefits.

Swift Justice

2009-05-20T22:38:00.002-04:00

I just checked my email and saw one from the Commissioner of the league from the problem parent. He emailed me let me know that the parent has been suspended for two matches. I really hope it teaches him to value what is important. I am rooting for him.

Flurry of activity

2009-05-19T11:42:00.002-04:00

These last 24 hours have generated quite a bit of work for me because of my dismissal of a parent that I commented about in my previous post. I was asked by the assignor for the field that I was at on Sunday to include a detailed run down of everything that was happening leading up to the incident and then the exchange as best as I could remember so that he could forward it on to the discipline committee for the league.

In my initial comment card (the one where you write down the final score, and send that in to the league) I included what I could but of course the space allocated is not really much at all. In the email I went into a lot more detail (more than in the post) as I knew who the player was and could figure out that it was the father or caregiver of that player. I submitted that Sunday night and Monday night I received an email where I was CCed that contained the assignor's comments plus my rundown of the events.

Immediately, I get an email from the R/D Commissioner asking if the threat that the disgruntled parent had uttered had made me feel fearful of my physical safety. It had not, but I suspect that if I had said yes, a bigger wave of problems would have befallen this person and the team in general. Also, he commented that I could have terminated the match if I did feel like the threats were on the physical side. At the time of the match, it did not cross my mind, but afterward I did think about it. To be truthful, the kids did not deserve it.

And then I get a couple of emails from people on the local club board to state how well they thought I handled the situation. It appears that there were plenty of people that were there who have some influence. Oh well, who knows, my stock may be rising! More to come on this as I have it but it certainly generates a lot more work that I would have expected. And better yet, more blog fodder.

Another Milestone achieved

2009-05-18T13:45:00.002-04:00

Not one that I wanted to ever say I reached, but it was done nonetheless. It was the sending off of a parent. Here is the story:

Halfway through the second half with the blue team up 4-1 and pressing hard to get even more a parent from the team winning all of a sudden starts going ballistic on me, yelling at the top of his lungs that there was a foul on the play. The play in question was a pass that one kid from the blue team chipped over to another who tried to volley and missed the ball, with no one from the other team even within a yard of him.

I walked over, had a lengthy conversation with him that ended with me saying "Would you rather watch the rest of your son's match here on the sideline or in the parking lot?" He said "Try me." I sent him on his way, and all the while he was walking off, he said fairly vulgar things. And there were threats of legal action if his son was injured. I documented it of course, spoke with the assignor who was not there and there was a parent who came over and said that he had seen the three matches and that I had done a good job, that there weren't enough refs with the guts to send off parents when they went ballistic.

The other two games I will write about later if I have the time, but there was nothing spectacular about them compared to this one. I did do a U11 Boys D1 match, and boy, they were a pleasure to watch compared to the D5 game that this incident originated from. The ball control, the dribbling, the crisp passing into space not at the person. I enjoyed it. And the bonehead parent did not come to mind at all until I was done with my three matches.

Next weekend is a tournament, and I have 6 matches total (2 Saturday and 4 Sunday). But hopefully the parents will not be as uptight...

On tap

2009-05-13T22:06:00.003-04:00

This weekend could be good, a nice one in terms of the forecast and certainly with 3 matches for me on tap. All U11, 2 boys and one girls. I will post more after the matches and hopefully they are good ones...

One game, no goals

2009-05-10T11:02:00.002-04:00

If there was a 0-0 ever written before the game started, the one I did yesterday was the one. U14 girls on a huge field. One team would try to advance by passing and the other with boom-ball.

The only interesting thing was that the center ref said a couple of interesting things, one: -that calls in the box were his, not ours and that calls on our side out of touch were our responsibility and that he would back us up. Still there was little in terms of action. Maybe one chance to score each.

Also, he called every possible handling call. I agree that those balls that go for 30 yards and then hit a hand should be called but if someone stikes it and the opponent is right there, hits the hand unintentionally, I do not call it but he did.

Still nothing else to comment, fairly lame game.

More rain on Sunday

2009-05-06T13:18:00.002-04:00

Saturday's promise of rain made it evident that Sunday was going to be a soaker, and it was. The game I had was an AR for a U11 match. I am not sure why exactly we have ARs for such low level games (it was a 3-0 but it should have been something like 10-0). One team just had their stuff together and the other could not put together two passes. They rarely crossed midfield.

It was just cold and wet enough to be uncomfortable and the non-challenging nature of the match made it all worse. The one positive aspect was that the other AR mentioned that I was too loose with my flag, as in, not keeping it at my side when not making a call (throw in, offside, goal kick or corner).

That alone was worth the miseable time. I was soaked after the match, but I had to stay as my son played immediately after. Fortunately the rain let up at the start of his match and did not resume until his match was over. So that made it 6 matches for the weekend. Too many in my book, especially 5 in one day. Not planning on doing that again.

This weekend looks tame, two adult AR matches on Saturday afternoon and that is it. On Sunday, it is Mother's day and there are two women I must tend to, so no reffing then.

Painful reminders

2009-05-03T08:31:00.002-04:00

That is what you get the morning after when you do 5 matches on Saturday. My legs ache quite a bit but in a strange way, it feels good.

The first two matches were adult league matches in a very well kept field about 15 minutes from home. What is interesting is that those fields are well kept because they normally close them at the first hint of rain, and yesterday we had a few sprinkles, and a constant threat of showers with thunderstorms all day long that never materialized. Anyway, the games were tame, but they were interesting plays. One involved me where I signaled an offside, and the center (the same one that I helped with his 8 to 7 assessment late last season) signals me down. He is so laxidasical in his motions that he really never gives off a air of control, though his matches never really get too out of hand.

At halftime he tells me first that it was a direct pass from a goal kick and that is why he flagged me down, then he says that it was actually a pass back, so what was it, a direct goal kick or a passback, because it can't be both. And to be truthful, I cannot be 100% sure myself, but I do not think it was either.

The other interesting thing was that the other AR was mimicking my calls all the time, I would signal for a goal kick and he would do the same. I would signal throw in and he would replicate, just weird.

In the afternoon games, they were all very tame. The league is played on huge turf fields and 13 year olds have a hard time scoring as they run out of gas before getting to the goal. In the first match, the game ended 1-1 and one team got like 6 calls for using their hands. The girls kept putting their hands in akward places and one time, the defender tried to chest it down and somehow her arms were over her head and the ball rolled over the arm. I had no choice but to call a penalty. The interesting part was that the team defending the penalty tried to make noise and shout to the penalty taker. I put a stop to that, but the penalty kick sailed over the crossbar.

The other games were also llow scoring affairs, both 1-0 with goals coming over a keeper flub and an offside trap gone wrong. In the one where I was a center, one of the players yelled out a bad word, where I heard it. He was the best player and I carded him but only a yellow. I did not feel like the game needed a red card at all. It turns out he was yelling it to his sister for taunting him when he missed a free kick. Funny how these things play out.

So this morning I am aching and have one more match to go. And it is rainy, gloomy, not exactly the type of day I wanted to have to play, so hopefully something gets suspended. Wish me luck...

A bunch of great matches and one really rough one

2009-04-29T22:46:00.002-04:00

Last Saturday, I had 4 good matches, U10 boys and a bunch of U8 matches as well. Those went fine. I felt confident with them. I also had a U12 girls that ended with one team angry at me that I did not call enough fouls against Blue "17" whom they called a fouling machine. I did call 3-4 fouls on her but they wanted every single call. On top of it, it was a close game, 1-0 for Blue and I had to stop the match twice in the second half for serious injuries (ironically, Blue suffered the injuries).

Anyway, I found myself second guessing after the fact. Should I have called more fouls? I did not see them to tell you the truth, but it bugs me if I did miss something important.

I have three ARs this weekend, two on Saturday, adult league and one on Sunday as well as two Centers on Saturday. Hopefully I can put this match in the past and move forward.

Is this already getting to me?

2009-04-21T17:39:00.002-04:00

I had read on other blogs how those people that ref get to a point when they start getting tired. This weekend, it hit me. I was getting tired of these matches! I certainly hope this feeling was a fluke, and maybe it was because I was not feeling well on Saturday, but it is something I cannot avoid. More to come later but I hope to be more positive in the next post.

Anyway, 3 matches this weekend, two ARs and one C. Nothing terrible to talk about, excpept I worked with one ref that I think has a good style, kind of proper, kind of gruff and kind of no-nonsense. Would love to work with him again.

Back from a rest

2009-04-14T22:03:00.003-04:00

It has been a couple of weeks and I am back. I did not have time to post my wrap-up from two weeks ago, so here it goes, after a break from a little bit of everything (work mostly).

The night before the start of the season, a friend asked me to go see the NCAA finals and we had some drinks. I am a light-weight for sure and the next morning, I was paying for it dearly. It sucked basically. A splitting headache that did not go away till well after the morning matches were over.

Maybe that is why I handed out three yellow cards that morning! Anyway, the games were interesting in the sense that the first match was between U12 D2 boys and they were good. The match ended 2-1 in favor of the local team. Well played, two out of character challenges that earned yellow cards (one for each team) but in general, well played. The first goal was scroed on a borderline offensive foul, the defending coach certainly thought so, but it seemed fair enough to me, so it counted.

In the second match, there was a superior team and an inferior team, but the superior team had 7 players (in U12 it is 8v8) and the inferior team has 4 subs to boot. So one team was always fresh and the other had to run a lot more. Nothing too critical in this match except one of the boys on the 8 boy team fell while the ball was rolling out of bounds for a corner kick and just reach out and grabbed the ball while in play (beside the corner flag). It must have been a brain fart on his behalf, but it was intentional handling, so in the book he went.

The other one was the 7 boy team had a nice play where it was lobbed and it seemed like a one on one but the attacker never got control of the ball, the goalie came out and they collided. It really did not look like a penalty to me or a foul on the attacker. It was a weird case of a collision where both players were going for the ball and were unaware of each other in some weird way. I could not bring myself to call it one way or another, so after the players were tended to, I had a dropped ball. The attacking coach had other things to say, but hey, what do they know, right? In the end that game went 0-0.

This weekend I have 3 U14 matches, two ARs and one center. Should be another interesting set of matches. See you out in the field.

Looking forward to this weekend

2009-04-04T00:31:00.002-04:00

It is late, and I am tired after a brutal week at work, but I am excited about the start of the season this weekend. Regardless, I have done some matches already, the day in and day out type start this weekend.

I am happy that my strategy to work with more local people this season seems to be working out. One assignor (the one that assigns for the turf fields 5 miles from home) states that he has me on matches pretty much all spring long. He has me down for 7 of the weekends. And I was just assigned matches for the adult league close by as well. That works for me because the money is great and it is not 35 miles away like I used to do for the other adult league.

Anyway, hope to be able to represent well this season and to pick up the number of matches I do this season.

Another tournament weekend

2009-03-29T22:25:00.002-04:00

This weekend, one of the local clubs had a huge tournament. Advertised as a massive tournament with many teams, it turned out to be more of a fizzle instead of a celebration of soccer. The reason, the weather.

At the start of the day on Saturday, we arrive to see my son's morning match and find out that the start has been delayed 30 minutes because the field (which was really the outfield of a baseball field) had a part that was not ready for play (the small part that was dirt infield along one of the touch lines. The county workers were dropping a ton of sandlike substance that was called something like Game Ready sand and promised to harden soft infields soaked in water. It was not raining, but rather a light drizzle. And to boot, all matches were reduced to 20 minute halves (which was enough as the final score was 6-4).

We went home and then I headed out to my field for my 4 matches. I arrived, met the field marshall and got my assignments and my gift (a shirt from the tournament). I then met up with my counterparts for the four matches, a father/son duo. The father was certainly a stand up guy, very good at maintaining control of matches and an all around good guy. His son was doing his first tournament and he did better than I expected given that it was his first tournament.

To note on the four matches I did:

Match one, I was an AR, and it was nothing terrible, except that I fell due to the field and the line being in such a muddy shape. I actually fell flat on my back and the game had to be stopped for a minute or two while I caught my breath again (it was really embarrasing, but it also hurt too!).

Second match was my first as a center and it was a blow out. 4-0 in 40 minutes of soccer and it was evident that one team was outclassed. Still I got a lot more gamesmanship from the winning team than from the team that should have been looking for an advantage.

Third match I was an AR again, and fell again. It was a weird game, the better team started winning with two goals and then the other team just pushed hard forward and got the tie at the end. At the end of the game, the team that tied had a breakaway and the ball gets stuck in the mud. The attacker, who had a step on the defender, fell on the ball, and the defender caught up. The ref called dangerous play as the ball was under the player and his crown jewels. The coach went ballistic, but the center was right.

Finally, the fourth match was an entertaining 0-0, but the first thing of note was the cards. One player on the red team was good but he threw his body around and around. I cautioned him with 10 minutes left in the first half. He had commited 4 fouls up to that point. 5 minutes into the second half, he took down someone from behind and so it happened, I pulled out my yellow again, and then the red. First time I ever had to do that. Then white commited a couple of stupid fouls, and had to caution them as well, but it was a good game in the end.

To conclude, the field was unplayable by the end of the day. To the point that Sunday schedule for all non-turf fields were cancelled despite being a beautiful day. So one day of soccer ruined fields for all season all over the area. I am sure the organizers of the tournament are proud (the reason it was played to begin with was to not have to refund teams their money).

Scheduling smeduling

2009-03-26T22:26:00.002-04:00

It was bound to happen, schedules came out for my son's league and now everyone wants to tie down the refs they plan to use immediately. I am amazed at the amount of commitment some of the regular season assignors want. This season, instead of trying to get games all over, and especially get games right before or after my son's matches, I decided to try closer to home. The closest one, basically assigns for one park, and not for a league. It gets really interesting. Anyway, I basically told him that I would give him first crack at my schedule and he already gave me two matches for the 4/5 weekend when everything gets going.

The other assignor I am looking forward to working with has some games on Saturday's, which is good and have taken a couple from him. I am not sure that my strategy will work, but I guess I will noodle it though and figure out if it makes sense. I don't like doing many games in a row, but at the same time, one match only sometimes does not do it either. Time will tell, but from what I see now, it will let me work better for the fall, in the sense that I will know which method works best. If I get to 40 matches, then it will be just fine. If I fall short, I will have gained knowledge on how best to work the system at least.

Figuring out assignors

2009-03-22T22:18:00.002-04:00

So far, for tournaments, I have been able to figure out two of my assignors. They each have a certain method of working with their referees and it is fun to see how they always come to the same results. It must work for them, otherwise, they would change, right? At least the similarities comes into play when determining schedules around my son's games.

The first of two assignors has a bunch of emails going out to a list of people and when everyone replys with their availability, he hands out assignments. What is interesting in these two times I have worked for him, is that he gives me the backup role on the fields where my son plays. I have done two tournaments with him and have yet to ref a match for him. He tends to assign me the backup role. I almost reffed one match this weekend but the ref made it just in time. So 0 for 2 with him. Still, I do not mind being backup as it is paid to watch games basically.

The other assignor has the opposite tendancy. Since she assingns based on time and has no real idea when specific teams play, she intentionally puts me in places where I cannot have my son's games. I guess it works for her. What is interesting is that for this coming tournament, there are a truckload of teams coming to town (at least 250 would be my guess) and she does not appear to work with backup refs. At least I never was asked to back up in her tourneys. Interesting dynamics.

So next week, it is on, 7 matches, 3 centers and 4 ARs. It will be interesting for sure to see if I can keep up with all that reffing. A test of willpower, so to speak.

Tournament Weekends

2009-03-19T22:10:00.002-04:00

This last weekend, I was able to do two AR matches in a tournament for girls. The age group I had was U14 and they were both rather blah in terms of the outcome. Both ended 1-0 but were well played (probably 4 fouls altogether between the two matches).

What I did take away and hope to implement when I am a center in the near future with a full crew at my disposal is the contact between the center and the AR. Both centers I had gave a lot of visual okays with the thumbs up and when a ball was divided and then out of bounds, if they saw it better than I did, they would indicate in some minor way, which way to give the throw. I liked it because it certainly made it look like we were a team. Other than that, it was a somewhat somber, ho-hum type of weekend in terms of matches.

This next weekend, I am backup for the tournament, and I will probably not get any matches, but will at least be able to be paid for watching some soccer. And the weekend after that, I get U14 boys for 7 matches. That should be fun.

More to come in the next couple of days. I really wanted to start reviewing some of the things that I bought, like whistles, shirts, etc, but it has been far too busy at work to dedicate even a moment to that, so when I get 5 minutes, I will make sure to write up an entry.

Scrimmage from hell

2009-03-11T11:05:00.002-04:00

The season is starting to get into gear and to that effect, my son's team had a pair of scrimmages this past weekend. I have been chomping at the bit to get some matches under my belt before the season starts and asked if I could ref these scrimmages to get started on that. As you may recall, I had done a couple of matches in the off-season (one for the ladies league and another as an AR for a friendly of a U-16 girls match).

We arrive at the field and after the warm ups, the game gets underway. My son's team is attacking in the first part of the match and after a pass where I truly deem the attacker on-side, I get a ton of howling from the other team's parents for off-side. I allow the play to develop and when the goal-kick is granted, I walk over to the parent to explain how a one man ref is different than a 3 man crew and that angles are hard when you are not on the line, so if there is any question as to one's offsidedness (not a word, I believe), I will probably not call it. I tried to be cordial and not allow it to bother me. Side note: Annoying parents really get to me as a ref. Sure we make mistakes but I am in no way trying to work a game to ones favor. If anything, I would be more tough on my son's team than a regular ref would because of the fact that I do not want to be perceived as favoring them at all.

Anyway, the reply I get from the parents is to look harder at off-sides and that they want to make sure the kids learn the right way to play. I understand that, but if it is a life lesson that we are trying to get here, how about behavior towards an official? Yeah, did not think that was part of their thought process.

Match goes on uneventfully and the second team comes on to replace the first team (so my son's team stays on the field and plays another team for the second half). The game was much tighter than the first, little in terms of scoring chances and a lot more friction. The other team scores and my son's team pushes harder to tie. They break away and have a one-on-one with the goalie when a defender tackles the attacker from behind just outside of the box. I blow the whistle hard and announce that in any other match, this type of act is a send-off offense. But I do not show a card at all (because it was a scrimmage after all and I thought this was not to be called so tight as a regular game). The boy walks off crying because I found out after making the announcement that he had hurt himself in the tackle. Lesson learned was that I should not be so quick to react (life lesson here, people) and let him come up and speak to him more quietly. It is almost as if I forgot that these kids are 8 or 9, not 14 and know what they are doing.

In another precious sideline incident, while the match is still 1-0, a ball is kicked around the goal line and it hits the hand of one of the defenders. Of course, the same parents start yelling "hand ball", "penalty" and a slew of other things. It certainly was not intentional so I let play go on but at the next stoppage, I had them hold the throw and walked over to those parents and told them that I had enough of their comments. In a scrimmage for crying out loud. I can't wait to see what this team will do when it really is on the line.

Anyway, that was it, a wild one for a scrimmage. I have two ARs coming up this Sunday, for a tournament and I will be on the U14 girls line. We will see how that plays out, but I bet they will be better behaved than these people were this past weekend.

Picking a system for Ref management

2009-02-22T15:12:00.002-05:00

One of the topics that I felt that no other referee blog covers in too much depth is that of referee management and assignment. There seems to be many, many ways one can interact with their assignors. Some work via email (simple for the ref, but it must be difficult for the assignors). Then there are those that are not your typical assignors that just call you to see if you can work with them for a certain specific date. I cannot imagine that system working well over a full season. There are those that basically give you a form to fill out at the beginning of the season and then will fill in the matches based on your declared availability. And finally, there are those that use web-based tools like the site TheArbiter.net. They are more or less a web-based form filling system that allows the assignor to work around the pre-entered schedules for each referee.

This all sounds fine and dandy, but I have some problems with the system. It is 2/22 and I get an email from one of the assignors that states he is going to try to start assigning games and such next week for one of the leagues. It is hard to work around so many options and it stinks that I have to 'declare' my availability to one league before another. I have my preferences that of course do not always match the league's need for scheduling. But the league that is asking for availability now is probably the one I would least like to work for as they play the farthest away from home and also pay some of the lowest rates in the area. Still, I would rather ref for them rather than be idle, but you see the dilema.

Anyway, for now, I am going into the system and am going to block out the dates so that I can open it up to them for when I am idle (and can work) but have no one else to turn to. The season has not yet started and it is already interesting.

Lively match

2009-02-14T15:44:00.002-05:00

It was a good match between between gray (state champions in the U16 age group) and black (a team from Delaware, I believe). But before I get into that, I arrived and the center I was working with (the one that has little to offer in terms of feedback) had just arrived and was a little more talkative than before, so there was hope.

The match started off with a bang, black kicks off, streaks down the line and gets tripped up in the box, on my side. I probably should have lifted my flag up to indicate a penalty but it was too early and just not that ironclad. If I had been the center, I probably would have called it, but as an AR, I deferred to the center who seemed to be in a better position.

After that, gray dominated play for most of the first half with black managing some counter attacks that kept me going. With 5 minutes left in the half, gray got a couple of quick goals, and the girls in black just did not have enough will to come back from that deficit.

In the second half, black tried and had a chance or two, but gray was very solid in the back. Gray got another halfway through the second half and that is how it ended, 3-0 but it was not that far apart in my book.

Of interest in this match was that I took my yellow and black shirts originally, thinking that they would be the only ones we would use but right before leaving, I threw in the red for good measure, and sure enough we used red (though I do not know why, as it was gray vs. black and goalies were orange and blue).

Also of note, this was the first time I got payment on the field per se, as opposed to getting a check. It was $30 for this one match and it was a lot of running. Again, paid exercise. Gotta love it.

Another fun (and cold) weekend coming up

2009-02-13T18:15:00.002-05:00

Late yesterday I received an email asking for refs for a friendly for U16 girls matches. I offered myself for one, but may have to do both.

I am an AR for a Grade 7 ref who I respect quite a bit. Very no nonsense and great match manager. My only concern is that he gives absolutely no feedback to you. He is like a slate, but maybe the cold weather tomorrow loosens his tongue. Probably not, but I will let you all know after tomorrow.

Rant on House Rules

2009-02-09T00:03:00.002-05:00

As you know, many leagues have house rules that sometimes interfere with the natual flow of soccer. The one house rule that always seems to generate passionate discussions is the one of no sliding tackles. If you read one of the other (better) blogs that refer to the subject, you will notice that they all, for the most part, make a distinction between a slide and a slide tackle.

This weekend, my son's team played another team in an indoor league where there was a house rule of no slide tackles. The match was at 3-3 when one of the players on my son's team dribbled past the goalie and had a step on the goalie and the defender and he slid to nudge the ball in. The ref called the goal off stating that there were no slide tackles, but in this case, there was no tackle in the slide, nor was anyone affected. He did it again later in the match again, where he waived another goal for the same reason. My son's team lost 4-3 but there was much discussion over the ref's rulings. Since everyone knows that I am a ref too, I get asked, "What would you have called?" and it is hard to defend the ref in cases like this. In both occasions, the player doing the sliding was not slide tackling, but rather sliding to play the ball. It is a hard one to enforce consistantly, because there are no slide tackles but in my book, at least, there can be slides, even when defenders are present and within playing distance (though I might feel inclined to call it if the defender were to flinch). Still, the plays in question here would not have been called for sliding as there was space and direction that favored the attacker.

I rant on this because this is one of my worries, these house rules that make it complicated to be fair sometimes. In the case of my son's team, the ref had direct result in the match, and as a fellow ref, that is something that you do not want to be associated with, the fact that your calls determined the outcome of a match (well they always do, but I think you understand what I mean). Ok, enough for tonight. Enjoy the week ahead.

What a beautiful day - for no soccer

2009-02-07T22:57:00.002-05:00

I do not know about you, but in this area, the sun was out, it was in the high 50s or low 60s and just a wonderful day. I arrived at the park where my ladies were to play 30 minutes before kickoff. It was strange because the field was filled with kids playing lacrosse and we came to find out that they were doing their tryouts and were planning to be there for another two hours. Well, that did not bode well as the ladies were also scheduled to play at the same time on the same field.

The lady in charge (soccer-wise) thought that there would be a problem with the time as the league had the permit for a while at the same time (2:30 in the afternoon) for many weeks now but during the week, they told her that the would not have it at that time for this weekend, and then they let her know that they were giving it to her for this week and the next. Evidently someone in the county's office did something wrong because the field had been doublebooked. In all of this, the ladies called the people who had played the previous match for their over-40 league at a different field and were told that the fields at the other field were available, so we all scrambled to that field arriving at 2:55 only to find out that there was another league playing at 3:00 so no match could be played. The ladies gave up at that point in trying to find a field for their match and were hoping to have the match rescheduled.

As all this is happening, I start emailing my referee coordinator to make sure that he is aware of what is going on, since I do not normally have these types of situation. He called me back about an hour after I got home and he said not to worry, that permits are not the the referee's problem and that I would get paid regardless (but it does suck for the ladies that they did not get to play their match). Regardless, it was interesting to see the dynamics of mass decision making in action. The women decided that they were going to try and get the match going at the other park rather than wait out the lacrosse people and if that did not fly, cancel outright. An interesting afternoon, for sure.

More on that seminar

2009-02-05T22:55:00.005-05:00

Getting back to the seminar that I mentioned a couple of posts ago, the important points that were mentioned were the following...

1. Get the rulebook from the FIFA site instead of the USSoccer site because the USSoccer site has only the first part of the FIFA book, the other part included in the FIFA book contains examples and more references helping you with the gray areas.

The FIFA link to the LOTG is here: http://www.fifa.com/mm/document/affederation/federation/81/42/36/lotg_en.pdf

The US version is here: http://images.ussoccer.com/Documents/cms/ussf/07_law_of-the-game.pdf

2. No chewing gum while reffing (FIFA disapproves)

3. A regular foul becomes misconduct when considering the follow: point of contact, direction of contact, time and severity, intent and result. If some or many of these are leaning towards reckless, then the yellow card needs to be shown.

Finally, there was a site mentioned that was going to be up and running soon that was going to have clips, etc. but I just went to it and it is not working now. I am putting it out anyway on the hopes that it will be working soon. http://www.thereflink.com/USSOCCER/index.html (updated on 3/11/09).

The presentations were good but really geared towards those with grade 7 or better it seemed. I will attend next year however, as there were other tidbits that I found useful.

Quick note

2009-02-05T11:17:00.001-05:00

Just a quick note today that I was assigned another match this weekend for the ladies. I am very happy that this is the case as it keeps me going, earns some money and also let's me try out the knee brace. Will update more after this weekend.

The match belonged to the players

2009-01-31T12:07:00.003-05:00

Ok, I am finally getting around to talk about the match, and I still owe you the commentary regarding the seminar and some links but I should be able to get to that shortly. Work during these last 2-3 weeks has been very demanding, so the only time I have is on the weekends.

The match last weekend was one that I thought was not going to be played, it was snowing (more like flurries) 25 F that morning and windy, but by the time I had to leave for the match, there was a lot of sun, still very cold and windy.

I arrived at the park with 25 minutes to spare for the start of the match and there was no one that looked over 40 and ready to play soccer. I found the field we were going to play on, a well worn turf field. There were a couple of people there, kicking the ball around or passing the football and when I thought that the game had been called, and that I had not heard about it, the ladies started arriving.

The match itself was uneventful, really nothing of note, except the brutal wind and that both goals in the match were against the wind. So basically the team with the wind to their backs had the ball on the other side of the field the whole game, but there was one counter-attack in each half that scored a goal.

The other two interesting things were that at the end of the half, I began to blow my whistle to signal the end of the half and one of the ladies shoots from the outside, beating the goalie, but I was already into my second blast by the time the ball crossed the line for a goal. I immediately disallowed the goal stating that the half ended when I began my whistling, not when it concluded but it did teach me a lesson, do not blow for the half unless there is little chance of an immediate goal to avoid confusion.

The other thing of note was the fact that in one play one of the ladies tried to save a ball from going out to touch and I was about 3 feet away and called that the ball had gone over the line. She went ballistic, but really, how could she when I was a few feet away. I could get it if I was 20 feet away and with a weird angle. Still she did not like it at all, oh well.

And my knee started acting up again, so since the match, I went to my doctor who said I had a strained LDL (never heard of it) and that I should wear a brace, warm up considerably before reffing and to premedicate with 600mg of Advil to see if the issue goes away, if not, he will take some pictures to see what else could be wrong, but that my knee is structually sound.

Back to the match, I was proud of the ladies, some of which were closer to 60 than to 40. They played hard, had a good idea of what to do with the ball and they were clean for the most part. I enjoyed their match and hope to do it again before the tournaments/matches start in a month or two.

More on the seminar in the days to come. Keep those emails coming!

The Seminar

2009-01-26T23:41:00.002-05:00

As promised, here is the installment that relates to the seminar I attended. The presenter for the two sessions I did attend was Herb Silva and the topics were Foul Severity determination and Communication Skills.

The first one was all about the ability to see the difference between a regular foul and a foul that had ill intentions. A couple of links were mentioned but I do not have my notes here (in bed and with my wife sound asleep beside me). I will milk another post and get those links to you shortly.

The second was mostly communication skills such as when to use humor, or the unspoken techniques that Herb Silva had observed from soccer referee greats like Pierluigi Collina and others. Most were gestures or looks that could cut through ice. This lecture was focused more on the higher level officials and I did see some relationship with my reffing but it was not really geared towards me. I did enjoy them, Herb Silva had a great presentation style and made things entertaining.

I also learned at the seminar that one of the local administrators for the club that my son plays in was going to be given an award, and that one of the people I knew was going to start assigning matches for the fields 5 minutes from my house, and to expect a busy season. I am more than happy about that as it means more work and less travel. Woo Hoo (or however it is spelled) to that tidbit!

More on the link, Herb Silva and the match report to come.

Winter Blues - Not so much

2009-01-25T16:59:00.002-05:00

Yes, it is bitterly cold this winter, but that does not mean that there is no referee action going on. I had received an email about a league that was being established for the winter months. It was regarding a league of women over 40 that was starting play in a few weeks. At the same time, there was a note regarding a workshop that was being held in the area with a special section for referees. Of course, the two had to coincide on the same day and basically the same time. So I am going to make one entry for the league and the other regarding what I got from the seminar as there are interesting things from each. And I want to milk the amount of posts I make, make two separate topics into three posts (one talking about them and the other two actually covering them). Anyway, more to come shortly. And yes, it is good to be back!

More on paychecks

2008-12-04T18:25:00.003-05:00

The last of the checks rolled in today, the tournament I had 8 mini matches on Saturday and then was hurt on Sunday. The total was $140 for that one, and compared to the $125 from the other tournament where I was just backup, it does not measure up in terms of compensation. Still, in the end, my season's haul was just north of $1,000 in 39 matches with comes out to about $26 per match but that average is skewed due to the fact that $125 were for being a backup ref. Still you take what you can get, right?

I centered 21 matches and was an AR in 18 of them. I only worked as a center in 2 matches where I had a full crew at my disposal. That is something I will need to improve on next season. It was interesting to do the U-13 match with a full crew, that was probably the best game I worked, because it was a challenge. I certainly want to work more of those matches for this season, but I do enjoy the U9 U10 crowd as well, as they are not yet jaded and not trying to play you as much.

As far as I can recall, I pulled 4 yellow cards, none during the regular season, but rather at tournaments. No reds this season, but I am sure that time will come. I will post more tidbits here and there during the off season and get to some of your comments, questions as they roll in.

Pleasant surprise

2008-11-30T14:47:00.002-05:00

Sometimes, not reffing is just as lucrative as actually reffing. I was a backup referee this past weekend and did not get a chance to actually manage any of the matches, but I was basically on call for 5 hours or so each day. I did not expect much in terms of payment because it was not much in terms of work but yesterday I received a check for $125 for such services. Not bad given the fact that I think the check I will get soon, for the 8 mini matches I had the week before, will probably be that much as well, though given this payoff, it should be more. I will give an update when that check arrives.

And I hope that everyone had a great Thanksgiving.

First Season in the books

2008-11-26T08:21:00.003-05:00

It is done, my first season was completed this last weekend with no matches to referee. All referees that were scheduled for the two fields I was the backup for, showed up. Interestingly enough, I did have to lend out my flags to one of the referees and then lend him some money since he forgot his wallet and did not know that matches had built in breakes in between then (to the tune of an hour and a half between match #2 and match #3 on each field).

I still expect to make around $80 for the efforts and I got to watch some good refereeing by some of those involved. Over the course of the winter, I plan to write up more of my experiences with the equipment itself as well as posting some pictures of the things I use to referee. I would love to hear some of your comments or suggestions on how to make it better.

Also, being the statistical enthusiast that I am, I will post some more details as to how much I made and all the matches I did, once the final numbers are counted.

Stand-by in the cold

2008-11-22T15:38:00.002-05:00

Oh boy was it freezing this morning. I arrived at 8am at the fields where I was a stand-by referee. I originally was not too happy that I was only selected to be a stand-in instead of a referee with assigned matches, but after feeling the blistering cold, the wind that cut right through you, I was more than happy to be able to sit in the car and wait to see if any of refs outside suffered from hypothermia.

The matches I did observe were well played for the most part. My son's team did very well with a 7-0 win and then an 8-0 win. But the really funny parts were the following:

- The first one was a jolly old referee. He did my son's first match and was a great example of how to work games without taking it too seriously but at the same time resepecting the kids and the parents. He had some dialogue with the crowd as well as explaining all the rules/decisions concisely when needed. And at the end of the game, he was leaving the field with us, so he turns to my daughter and asked her if would like a pencil. She said yes and he pulled out a soccer themed pencil. He gave a couple more out to the kids that were still around. That is why I called him a jolly old referee. Just a fun guy to be around. I am not sure if he ever works U19 matches or if it is mostly younger kids, but those tactics will not fly after a certain age group.

- The other interesting thing was that during the break between the first round of matches and the second, I was able to drive up to Walmart to buy some gloves and a knit hat as I did not have any and it was desperately needed. As I was walking up to pay I overheard a woman talking on the cell and her conversation went very much like this..."the girls played well but they were beaten, I do not remember the final score but it was not close. And the worst part was the referee, he called everything in favor of the other girls..." and then she was gone. I wanted to stop the woman and ask her if she really thought that the referee had that much ill will against a group of girls he does not even know. I think not!

I will have some more tomorrow, but the bad part is that my knee is acting up so I may just have to bite the bullet and go to get it looked at.

Limping out the season

2008-11-18T00:59:00.002-05:00

Nowhere close to what I was expecting for the rec tournament I did this weekend. The day started off ok, the rain was held in check for Saturday morning and only scattered sprinkles could be felt. Traffic was not bad heading to the matches, but then I did not expect much at 7:15am on a Saturday morning.

Upon arrival, I see that the teams are arriving and I make my way to the field, but I must go on a tangent/rant. Matches were 25 minutes each with 5 minutes in between matches, so each match was expected to be played in 30 minute intervals. It was certainly impossible to keep that going. After the first match ended at 8:37 (already 7 minutes behind schedule), I knew there was no hope in keeping up with the alloted times. In the end, I was 35 minutes behind schedule when I ended my 8th match, and I have to say that I thought I did a good job.

Anyway, upon arriving, the field coordinator states that there is a big interest in getting the matches played but that I was the final say on if the matches would be played. I looked at the fields and saw that there were some minor puddles, but nothing that looked deep and/or problematic, so I said that we would be able to play.

The field was not in the best of shapes to start, and by the end it was a steaming pot of mud. I pity the referee who came after me. As the matches wore on, I could see that footing might be troublesome to maintain.

In the end, the level was not very good, the girls were all U12 and from rec leagues, so the level of play was not fantastic. The field did not allow for much fluid play and in 8 matches, I had a 2-0, 3 1-0 matches and 4 0-0 matches, not exactly brilliant but given the circumstances, understandable.

On a side note, I am now limping thanks to some misstep I took at some moment between the 5th or 6th match that caused me to run around in pain for the last of match 7 and all of match 8. The field probably contributed to the injury. At this point, it does not seem like a torn MCL or anything close, more like sprained. So not having actual reffing responsabilities next weekend is not a bad thing. At this point, I am happy the season is almost over and ready for the holidays to begin in earnest.

Housekeeping

2008-11-14T10:39:00.003-05:00

I realized that the links on the left were not working, so I fixed those and added one link to a blog of another ref who has been at it for a long time now and writes quite a bit as well too. His style is one that I can only hope to emulate and there are hundereds if not thousands of entries. I started reading it a couple of weeks ago and still have not caught up (I am on November of 2006). Refblog.com is the site, just in case.

No silver lining

2008-11-14T10:31:00.002-05:00

I spoke too soon regarding these last two tournaments. The first one, starting tomorrow, looks to be a doozy with all the rain we may be getting. It is wet now and cold, so I imagine it will stay that way. I am not really looking forward to it, but I am in too deep at this point. At least I have 8 mini games on Saturday (the equivalent to 4 regular matches) and then Sunday I have 4 more (regular matches). I will tally these up as 8 matches total, though 12 results will be had.

As for the following weekend's tournament, I think I am paying the price of being a relative newbie. I was put in as a Stand-by for the fields where my son is to play. Not exactly what I was hoping for, but beggars can't be choosers, so I will take it and run with it. If I get a match or two, I will be happy but at least I will be able to watch my son's matches without any issues that weekend. More to come as it happens but let's say I do not expect much of anything to come from this tournament. So much for going out with a bang.

First Payment

2008-11-05T19:31:00.002-05:00

Today I received my first check for services rendered. I was up to about $800 on my watch, in terms of all the leagues, of which there are 5. The check is nothing earth-shattering ($87) but it does represent the first amount that someone ever pays me for blowing a whistle. I am actually proud of myself (even though all the positions I did in this league were AR positions) and cannot wait to get more, but it puts in perspective that there are responsibilities. Today, it is sad in a way, that it went from a hobby and a passion to a job. I just hope that it stays as vibrant as it is now.

Assignments in so many colors

2008-11-03T14:54:00.002-05:00

So the season is not dead yet. I had received an invite from an assignor that I never worked with a couple of weeks ago that basically said, call me at 11am today for assignments at the upcoming tournament on the weekend of November 15 and 16. So I did. At 11am on the dot. She was evidently fielding calls from other people already.

When she got to me, she asked me what I had worked already this season and what I felt comfortable with, etc. I got a Saturday with U12 girls and a Sunday with U11 boys. It was just interesting how you get assignments to that tournament. My son played in that tournament last season and the level of reffing was decent, to say the least, so I am hoping to be able to keep up the level. And U11 and U12 is not the oldest (U15 looked to be the oldest) but it was not the youngest either (with U8 being the youngest) and I would imagine that they keep those for the younger referees. I also got the mornings, as I do not mind being at the fields at 7:30, and the wife and kids will not be up until 9:30 or so, that works out well as there would not be that much time away while everyone is awake. The afternoon possibility was better to see championship matches (all the finals are played on Sunday afternoon) but it would also be something of a bigger break if we had any other weekend activities.

And the following weekend, I am part of another tournament, this time, with my son's team in play as well, so there are still some matches to be had even as the season winds down. And to think I am at 30 matches this season already. I will be close to 40-45 when it is all said and done for this first season. Not too shabby.

Wacky weekend

2008-11-02T20:44:00.002-05:00

Well, this was one of those weekends that all the others have mentioned in their soccer reffing blogs (I plan to link some after posting this) but I never had experienced myself. I was scheduled to do 6 matches this weekend (yeah, my wife was thrilled!). But on Thursday, I get an email that the three games on Sunday had been moved from one site, to three and at all different times. I email the assignor who basically said that she had no control over the changes in venues and she understood if I had to cancel. I did as the games were all over the place. So I was down to 3 matches on Saturday. I emailed one of the assignors and asked if he had any matches. He sends one U13 my way for Sunday, so I was back to 4 matches. Then Friday night, I get the email from my Saturday matches confirming the assignments, and I am not on the list, so I was down to 1 match, man could not catch a break!

I email that assignor and he replies that he sent the wrong spreadsheet and the new spreadsheet did have me, so I was back up to 4. In the end, I did 5 matches as the one on Sunday was preceded by being asked to AR during my son's match, where the scheduled AR no-showed.

So on to the matches...the Saturday ones were all ARs for the local rec league in U16 and U14 formats. There were a couple of close games but what really called my attention was the fact that the local league had boys that were half the size of some of the other team's kids. The interesting match was a 1-0 match that was decided by a shot that hit the goalie's hands, popped back and landed just past the goal line for a goal. I was glad that I had run to the end and was able to see for sure that the ball had gone totally in before being snached again by the keeper. I ran up the line and the center showed his appreciation after the match for my being in position.

On Sunday, I was pulled last minute while watching my son's match to AR for the match right next to it in a U12 match. The only thing of note was the coach of the Orange team that sounded like Bruno Tonioli from Dancing with the Stars. Out of nowhere he starts yelling at me that I had not seen a hand ball. I do not get coaches. He immediately made me angry and I told him in no uncertain terms that it was the last I wanted to hear from him in that manner again. He pipped down after that.

Then I ran to my center match about 30 minutes away and did an awesome match of a U13 game. The level and speed was not something I was expecting. White was whiny (the kids were, the parents and the coaches not so much). Blue was also asking for fouls that just were not there.

We had a 2-1 match in favor of white when at about 4-5 minutes into the second half, I realized I had not started the watch and so I did some math and used a technique I read about somewhere else. If you forget to start the time, announce the time remaining with plenty of time, like at the 15 minute mark, so that no one is surprised when you count it down from 15, 10, 5 and 2 minutes. I like to do that in a close game.

The other was that on a corner, blue heads it and the ball hits the crossbar, bounces down and only my lead AR could see if it was a goal or not. I stopped the match, asked the AR and he said that he was fairly sure that the ball had gone in. He was not in the best position in the world, but he was the only one who could have seen it, so I validated the goal. The game ended 2-2 but I had to card one of the blue players for retaliating on a non-call that he thought he should have gotten. Other than that, it was a good game, an eye opener for me. Hoping to do more of those as they were the full sized field and this was fun!

Next week I am on travel, so I am not sure when the next post will be, hopefully soon.

Season wind down

2008-10-27T22:17:00.003-04:00

This coming weekend will be the last for this season except for a late November tournament that I will be participating in. I have six matches scheduled between Saturday and Sunday so it promises to go out with a bang. I am going to post total number of matches and other details once the season is officially over and hopefully, there will be some activity during the winter months as well but if not, I will resume once things start to move again in spring.

Rain, rain, play anyway!

2008-10-26T10:54:00.002-04:00

In my last post, there were concerns over the weather this weekend. It was supposed to rain a fair amount on Saturday and it did. In our area, I would say at least 3/4 of an inch. However, when I got up at 7:30am, I checked the local website, expecting to see all the fields closed and noticed that the turf fields were open. I was not sure if I was on the turf fields (I was pretty sure I was not) but when I checked my email, I realized I was.

The first match, a close 1-1 match between two U10 teams was centered by one of the senior referees. He gave a lot of tips on when to call offsides, positioning, everything. I was certainly glad to have worked his game.

The second match was much more waterlogged and even the turf fields were ponding. I was really hoping for some thunder so we could just call the games but, no! It came down but no thunder or lightning in sight. The second match was a more monotonous affair, with both teams having to play a man down due to the fact that one of the teams did not have any subs. They ended up losing 5-2 but it was a good time at least where I could joke a bit with the team's parents.

Finally, it was my turn to center and the assignor was one of my ARs. I did an ok match given the circumstances (downright downpour). I missed an offside call on the other side of my AR, where the trail AR (the assignor) had to point it out. But it was the rain and everything else that made it interesting. In the end, I called only a couple of fouls, like 4-5 offisides and it was a 1-0 game decided in the end of match by a relatively tame ball that trickled through the hands of the goalie. Now my hope is that I can get more travel matches close to home. We will see.

So much for that!

2008-10-21T23:16:00.002-04:00

They are calling for a big chunk of rain starting this Friday and into Saturday, so I will probably not be doing the games on Saturday. Too bad too, because it seems like it would help with getting more games closer to home.

Only time will tell but from the reports tonight, things look like they will be very wet (and canceled) for Saturday.

Blowouts and bow outs

2008-10-20T18:46:00.004-04:00

Well, I am going to take a break it seems for the next week or so, as I will be busy doing other things this coming weekend, most probably. I have a birthday celebration I need to take care of on Saturday and Sunday has us traveling over an hour and a half for a match in Frederick, MD. There will probably be no reffing this coming weekend and probably no posts either.

The other weekend (Nov 1 and 2) should be interesting though as I am going to be doing a center for a U15 girls match and then two ARs for U16 and U19. I am excited about that as I will be centering my first set with full ARs. I am ready, I think...

As for yesterday's match, it was a complete blowout, the visiting team camped out in the home team's half the whole time and racked up 6 goals in the process. I called one offside, one hand ball and one or two fouls, tops. If all games could be like that!

Well, I am editing this post because right after I posted this, I get a call from the local rec league assignor who said that he wanted me to center and AR for him and the league's travel assignor this Saturday morning. So much for not having to do much this weekend. It will be a fun weekend after all! More to come later in the week or this weekend.

(AR)e we there yet?

2008-10-18T17:49:00.004-04:00

What a long set of matches! I had 4 AR positions today and it seemed like one match droned on to the next. It was quite tiring, cold and windy. I did get to see some good Centering in the first couple of matches, but the matches themselves were mostly blowouts.

The last two matches were much closer but the Center left a lot to be desired. He arrived late, had no flags, his whistle did not work, etc. Still the matches were much more intense as there was a 3-0 match at the half that ended 4-3 for the other team for the first match and then a well played 2-1 match with the tallest U12 player I had seen in my life (probably a little taller than me and I am 5'9").

Tomorrow I have a U11 Girls from the travel so it should be fun.

Realization

2008-10-15T09:54:00.002-04:00

Today, on my way to work, I came to a realization that I had not been paid one penny for my work up to now. Everyone appears to have a different system, but in the end, they all take their sweet time to pay.

One league states that they pay twice in the season, at around mid season (of which I think we are around that time) and the others do not have a clear policy, but when I added up my games up to now, I am over the $500 mark. Not that it is a ton of money, but it is decent change for paid exercise.

Anyway, I thought it was funny. In the end though, I feel I am well organized as I have a spreadsheet with all my games and another spreadsheet with my travel related expenses. I also have a folder where I keep all my purchases related to soccer, which are around $300-$400 at this point. So if you think about it, I will have only made $200-$300 after expenses this first season (but I should be able to deduct all the soccer expenses at tax time - I hope!).

This weekend, I have 4 AR matches in the U10 and U12 local rec league and then one Sunday U11 girls center. I want to get some more ARs with the adult league but I am not sure my wife will be happy with all that reffing when this past weekend it was all I did. I will update close to the weekend.

Weekend Work

2008-10-13T14:06:00.002-04:00

It was a interesting, fun-filled weekend. I had four games scheduled for the tournament, two U9 games and two U10 games. At the same time, my son's team was playing in another U9 bracket.

I am sure that anyone who referees games sees games differently if there is a vested interest due to the participation of a child, relative, etc. I have disagreed many times with referees in the past when it involves my child and his team, but I do not believe I had seen such bad officiating in some of the matches I witnessed. More on that later.

My four matches went ok, I got to call my first penalty and handed out my first yellow cards. In the end, I called two penalties and gave out two yellow cards, all in the same match, one penalty and one yellow card a piece.

The first one was evident, the boy was in the box by about two feet, got past the defender and the defender just leveled him with a kick to the shin of the foot that was in the air at the moment. It was a reckless foul and halfway towards a red card in my book. I immediately called the penalty and showed him the yellow card as it was truly unsportsmanslike. They converted the penalty.

Three minutes later, the other team is attacking and another interesting play occurs. A defensive player passes back to the goalie and the goalie falls on it. I call an indirect in favor of the attacking team. Since the ball was in the goalie box, I take the ball outside of the goalie box and have all the players on the defending team line up under their goalpost. In the end, they missed it but in the scramble, a defender charges and misses the ball and strikes the attacker who had the ball. A penalty again, but for the other side (I was not trying to play 'fair' in the sense of giving one team what the other team had received, it just happened that way). The goalie saved the kick, and that was the half.

In the second half, I showed a yellow to a boy who just kept on fouling. I had called 3-4 fouls on him in the first half and on the second foul of the second half, I said enough, and showed him a yellow for persistent infringement of the laws of the game. What was funny was that the coach of that team, at halftime, came out to talk to me and said that he wished all the refs called the games like I did, and had no fear of calling the difficult plays (2 penalties, a yellow card and an indirect on the 6 - all in the first half of a 25 minute half).

I later found out that he complained to the referee table about me stating that his kid had only commited 4-5 fouls in the game and he did not understand why I was being so harsh with him. Funny how these things work...

The other games were much less involved. One of them was a 7-0 blowout, so not much there, and the other two were U10 matches that were good, well played games, with little fouling, one ended 1-1 and the other 2-0.

Back to my son's matches now. I have to say that many of the younger refs, those kids in the 15-18 age group seem to have a solid lack of understanding for the rules of soccer, and an adverse feeling towards the blowing of the whistle. We had three or four times when the whistle was not heard when play needed to be clearly stopped.

And as a side note, as a point of reference, I follow the plays closely (and that is why I sometimes get winded and tired after only two youth matches) and get to see a lot of the minor fouls that go on, like the pushing off, the pulling of shirts, the high kicks, etc. I, on average, call about 10-15 fouls a game I would think in the U9 to U10 age group and I feel that some teams commit fouls all the time because they are trained to foul all the time. In two of my son's matches, no fouls were called in a 50 minute match. I repeat, NO FOULS. That is virtually impossible. At the same time, I am watching the games and seeing what I would call a foul. Let's just put it that my sense of foul recognition and many of the younger kid referee's sense of fouls are way off.

Finally, the worst play of the weekend was a breakaway of my son's team towards the rival goal and he gets fouled from behind and in my opinion, inside the penalty area. The ref calls the foul, puts the ball on the line of the penalty area and calls for a direct free kick. What the heck is that? On the line is inside the box, according to the rules, but the boy would not be budged (I refrain from yelling, like the other parents and coaches due as I do not want to appear partial and then have to ref those other kids in another game).

In the end, my son's team did not do well at all, and the officiating had nothing to do with it, so no blame there, but really, if you are going to be a referee in this sport, please, please read the rules, do a couple of season in the rec league if you are not sure and then come and do reffing for a more complicated and advanced soccer style as many of my coworkers this weekend were not ready for "prime-time".

Excitement

2008-10-09T23:23:00.002-04:00

This coming weekend I get to do a tournament. It is called the Battlefield Classic and I have four games scheduled, so that should be fun. At the same time, I am a stand-by ref, so if there are any problems, injuries, etc, I may do more. I will try and post between day 1 and day 2.

As for this past week, I did 3 U8 rec league centers and then an AR for a U19 league. The three centers were a lot of fun and very competitive in the sense that all three games were close. 2-2, 1-0 and 3-2 were the final scores.

The AR position for the Sunday game was an assessment game. I did not know it was an assessment game until I received an email from the center stating to make sure that I was early so I could go over all the lines etc. He also asked me to make sure that I brought my USSF card, so I emailed my assignor and the person who had registered me into the reffing world as well to ask them if I could get it or at least the number. The registrar sent me a strange response, to the point that stated, "You are probably way out of your league and will probably hurt the center's chances to get to go to Grade 7". When I spoke to my assignor though, she said that I should not worry about an 8 to 7 upgrade, most everyone passes that one and you really only have to terrible at foul recognition to screw it up.

Anyway, I went, and boy those U19 boys were tough. The amount of mental abuse the center and the ARs get in these games is unreal. I called a paper thin offsides, where the attacker was just in front of everyone else and another attacker appeared to pass the ball (or it could have been a self pass) but when I raised my flag, holy moly, the boys let me have it. "Thanks for making us lose the game", "Maybe everyone should get glasses" and so on.

For the first time ever I had to tell the coach to can it as I had had enough. The team was down 1-0 at that point in the second half and what made it funny was the fact that they scored twice in the final 10 minutes to steal the match.

After the match the assessor went over the things the center did well and not so well. I thought he had done a decent job. Not spectacular, but good enough to pass. The assessor said that he was going to pass him but barely, as he had horrible positioning, where he did not look at the ARs and he did not work with the lead AR on plays to make sure that everything was covered. The fact that he had his back to me while corners were being taken on the other side of my field was the one thing the assessor though was the worst.

It was a good experience, but not one that I want to do again, at least not for a couple of weeks, the kids were brutal enough. I will update everyone this weekend after the tournament.