Today's games for the most part have been rained out (though it is sunny) and I drove to the field anyway since the day was looking nice. Next time I will make sure that I check email and the website before driving down and finding out that things were not as they seemed. Always a learning experience.
Yesterday I was able to do a girls U10 match. And there was not much to comment as one team was clearly superior to the other (4-0 was the final score) but I realized in the first half that it did not seem to be too hard to stay back and watch the match from farther away that I normally do and still make the calls.
That 'discovery' lasted me until about midway through the second half, I myself felt I was out of position and could not see things as closely. I even felt I called a couple of fouls on the reaction of the players instead of what I saw, so I am scratching that, I am going to have to be in better position and closer to the play because this calling it from 20 feet just does not suit my style. As always, it is good to walk away from a match and figure out you learned something.
There is still one AR position left this afternoon that appears to still be on, we will see if that is the case closer to the kick-off time, but I certainly hope so as I wanted to make over $100 this weekend (my wife's car had to get a lot of work done) and could use every penny!
Sunday, September 28, 2008
Wednesday, September 24, 2008
Last Weekend's Recap
Alas, I am in training this week for my 'real' job and so updating this blog has not been priority one. But I did want to document some of the experiences from last week as there were a couple of interesting things that happened.
I did two ARs on Saturday and one center and one AR on Sunday. Let me start chronologically. On Saturday, I was scheduled to do the two ARs, for the local rec league. I was not too 'up' for it, because of the pay for these matches. The AR position paid only $14 per match (about 1 hour), was for U10 boys I and thought to myself, this is a waste of my time. I also thought that the level of play was going to be beneath me (and you will see how I had to swallow that thought later) but in the end, I had signed up and was going to do it because it was the right thing to do.
I arrived at the field about 10 minutes before kick-off (traffic getting there was absurd that afternoon) and when I arrive, I see the other two there, the Center was probably 15 if that much and the other AR was 13 years old. That only added to my thought of 'why am I doing such a rinky-dink match when I have already done more significant matches'. To top it off, the center hands me his flag and it had to be the cheapest looking flags I had ever seen. I have a set of flags of course, and they were not too expensive, maybe $10 or so. They are not professional looking, but they do look ok. These were more like sticks with colored toilet paper. Again, adding it up in my mind that this was not worth it.
To top it off, we start the match and the Center calls an indirect kick inside the penalty area right at the start of the game because of an appearant pass back to the goalie which I did not think was correct. What made it worse was that the boy taking the free kick shoots directly on goal and scores (remember it was an indirect kick) and the ref validates the goal. To be fair, I believe I was the only one who noticed. At halftime I asked him what he thought of the play and he insisted someone else touched it before going in, so at least he knew the rule, though his eyesight would need to be checked.
That first match ended 8-0 and was over 5 minutes into the match. The second match was a lot closer and right before kickoff, the referee assignor for the league stops by and says that he is going to be watching the match. I later realized that this whole deal of giving me an AR position for a match that I knew for sure was not very challenging was all a cover to see if I would take even the most trivial assignments seriously.
In the end, there were two interesting things of note in the second match that day. The first was a foul by the goalie outside of the box to an attacking player. I raised my flag but it seemed the Center shot me down. The second was a breakaway where one player was going on goal and a teammate was in front of him with just the goalie to beat. The numbnuts passed it to his teammate (in an offside position of course as the goalie was the last man) and so they blew it.
After the match, the assignor said that on the goalie foul, I should have pointed towards the side of the team making the infraction so the Center would know who to call the foul on. The other one was the fact that the offside call was spot on according to him and he saw my enthusiasm for reffing by taking a simple U10 rec league match so seriously.
So now I was offered to do an AR position this weekend for the u16 girls in a more competitive league to see how I do there. It will be interesting for sure.
Sunday's matches were great. The center match I did was a U10 boys travel match and I cannot tell you how amazed I was at the level of ball handling these boys had. The match ended 3-3 and it was so well played. The other match was an AR for the adult co-ed league. I learned in that match exactly how difficult it is to be watching your sideline up and down the whole way and at the same time, keep up with the second to last defender. I caught myself several times either out of position or barely getting to see who the ball went out on my side. That is something I am going to have to work on, for sure.
This coming weekend, I have two centers and one AR, and all are local, so hopefully, things continue to work out well. It is fun for sure and I am always looking forward to the weekend it seems.
I did two ARs on Saturday and one center and one AR on Sunday. Let me start chronologically. On Saturday, I was scheduled to do the two ARs, for the local rec league. I was not too 'up' for it, because of the pay for these matches. The AR position paid only $14 per match (about 1 hour), was for U10 boys I and thought to myself, this is a waste of my time. I also thought that the level of play was going to be beneath me (and you will see how I had to swallow that thought later) but in the end, I had signed up and was going to do it because it was the right thing to do.
I arrived at the field about 10 minutes before kick-off (traffic getting there was absurd that afternoon) and when I arrive, I see the other two there, the Center was probably 15 if that much and the other AR was 13 years old. That only added to my thought of 'why am I doing such a rinky-dink match when I have already done more significant matches'. To top it off, the center hands me his flag and it had to be the cheapest looking flags I had ever seen. I have a set of flags of course, and they were not too expensive, maybe $10 or so. They are not professional looking, but they do look ok. These were more like sticks with colored toilet paper. Again, adding it up in my mind that this was not worth it.
To top it off, we start the match and the Center calls an indirect kick inside the penalty area right at the start of the game because of an appearant pass back to the goalie which I did not think was correct. What made it worse was that the boy taking the free kick shoots directly on goal and scores (remember it was an indirect kick) and the ref validates the goal. To be fair, I believe I was the only one who noticed. At halftime I asked him what he thought of the play and he insisted someone else touched it before going in, so at least he knew the rule, though his eyesight would need to be checked.
That first match ended 8-0 and was over 5 minutes into the match. The second match was a lot closer and right before kickoff, the referee assignor for the league stops by and says that he is going to be watching the match. I later realized that this whole deal of giving me an AR position for a match that I knew for sure was not very challenging was all a cover to see if I would take even the most trivial assignments seriously.
In the end, there were two interesting things of note in the second match that day. The first was a foul by the goalie outside of the box to an attacking player. I raised my flag but it seemed the Center shot me down. The second was a breakaway where one player was going on goal and a teammate was in front of him with just the goalie to beat. The numbnuts passed it to his teammate (in an offside position of course as the goalie was the last man) and so they blew it.
After the match, the assignor said that on the goalie foul, I should have pointed towards the side of the team making the infraction so the Center would know who to call the foul on. The other one was the fact that the offside call was spot on according to him and he saw my enthusiasm for reffing by taking a simple U10 rec league match so seriously.
So now I was offered to do an AR position this weekend for the u16 girls in a more competitive league to see how I do there. It will be interesting for sure.
Sunday's matches were great. The center match I did was a U10 boys travel match and I cannot tell you how amazed I was at the level of ball handling these boys had. The match ended 3-3 and it was so well played. The other match was an AR for the adult co-ed league. I learned in that match exactly how difficult it is to be watching your sideline up and down the whole way and at the same time, keep up with the second to last defender. I caught myself several times either out of position or barely getting to see who the ball went out on my side. That is something I am going to have to work on, for sure.
This coming weekend, I have two centers and one AR, and all are local, so hopefully, things continue to work out well. It is fun for sure and I am always looking forward to the weekend it seems.
Friday, September 19, 2008
This weekend
This weekend, I have more games, for sure. My goal is to do at least one match every weekend this season. That way it does not take a ton of time out of my weekend, which already includes a game on Saturday with my daughter and my son's on Sunday.
However, this weekend, turned out to be quite moving as I have 3 ARs for the local rec league on Saturday and one center and one AR on Sunday. The Sunday matches are what I am looking towards as they are a U10 boys match and then an adult coed league match where I am an AR. I am excited that I will get to do 5 matches this weekend, but hoping the body keeps up with the pace I am going to put it through as I am not much of an exerciser. If you read an earlier post, I refer to reffing as a form of paid exercise.
In terms of getting these assignments, it is a lot of reaching out. Once you complete your course as a Grade 8, my suggestion is to start off and talk to one of the instructors. There is a great chance that one of them will be an assignor, so start with them and ask them if they have a league that you can ref with, or get on a mailing list. Your local referee organization should have a list of certified assignors for your area. Send them an email as well stating that you would like to be put in their mailing list. Finally, find out about tournaments via the assignors you work with once you have sent the initial message.
You will see that they have to have a ton patience and amazing organization (at least in this area) because the sheer number of games and the level of what can and cannot be booked, is quite mind boggling. By way of this post, I want to say thank you to all the assignors for all the work, late nights they put in trying to juggle the matches, refs, assignments.
I will update everyone as much as I can for this weekend's games and hope to have at least one more for next weekend. Wish me luck and thanks for the emails!
However, this weekend, turned out to be quite moving as I have 3 ARs for the local rec league on Saturday and one center and one AR on Sunday. The Sunday matches are what I am looking towards as they are a U10 boys match and then an adult coed league match where I am an AR. I am excited that I will get to do 5 matches this weekend, but hoping the body keeps up with the pace I am going to put it through as I am not much of an exerciser. If you read an earlier post, I refer to reffing as a form of paid exercise.
In terms of getting these assignments, it is a lot of reaching out. Once you complete your course as a Grade 8, my suggestion is to start off and talk to one of the instructors. There is a great chance that one of them will be an assignor, so start with them and ask them if they have a league that you can ref with, or get on a mailing list. Your local referee organization should have a list of certified assignors for your area. Send them an email as well stating that you would like to be put in their mailing list. Finally, find out about tournaments via the assignors you work with once you have sent the initial message.
You will see that they have to have a ton patience and amazing organization (at least in this area) because the sheer number of games and the level of what can and cannot be booked, is quite mind boggling. By way of this post, I want to say thank you to all the assignors for all the work, late nights they put in trying to juggle the matches, refs, assignments.
I will update everyone as much as I can for this weekend's games and hope to have at least one more for next weekend. Wish me luck and thanks for the emails!
Sunday, September 14, 2008
First Center Breakdown
Well, it is over and done with. My first center for a U9 girls match. The other two games I thought I was going to do, was given to another ref who asked for the games before I did. In retrospect, I am happy that I did not work them as it was literally 95 degrees plus and I was soaked to the bone after that first game.
Anyway, the game was a tight one, between two teams that handled the ball very well for U9. I was impressed with the control that some girls had (one using her shoulders to control the ball). In the end, the white team came from a goal down to win 2-1 with 2 minutes left to play. The orange team I thought was marginally better, and had a better keeper, but they just ran out of gas it seems.
What was interesting was how on my toes these girls kept me. I had to pay attention to a lot more shoving and they were certainly more agressive than I thought they could be. I also had to watch for offsides more than I originally would have anticipated. They moved the ball well enough to cause problems and my positioning probably was horrible as it was my first match. But I believe I was able to make every call that needed to be called. I am sure I screwed up some throw-ins as the action sometimes was happening far enough where I was not 100% sure.
Two interesting things of note, the first was that after the match, a coach came to question one of my calls, where there was a delayed offside (a girl on the orange team was offside when her teammate attempted a pass to her, the ball was interecepted by a white player and the offside attacker when to try and take the ball away - that is when I called an offside). I had to explain that the mere fact that she was in an offside position was not enough to call offsides. As the pass was going towards her, the interception occured and I did not want to stop play as she was not at that point participating in the play, but she tried to strip the ball and that is when I determined that she was in an offside position and trying to take advantage of that from a pass that was originally going towards her. Mind you that this interaction took 2-3 seconds at the most, so I get it when refs are critizied because no one on the orange team was happy with my call, to the point where the coach questioned me after the game.
The other interesting thing was that I had a player kick a ball twice on a restart before anyone else touched it. Another ref that I spoke with a couple of weeks ago stated that he had been reffing for over 15 years and that he had never had to call it until last week. Well, I got it on my first center ever. I wonder how long will go by before I call it again (of course it is more common in rec and kids leagues like this than older more advanced leagues).
So the first one is in the books, I will be doing some AR work next weekend for the local rec league and will be trying to get some more games for next weekend, but in the meantime, I am happy with what I did yesterday. It was a tough game because of the evenness of both teams. After the final whistle, all the girls from both teams came over to thank me, and that is what I enjoyed the most. I felt that if I had not done a good job, then the coaches and the players would not have been all smiles. It was fun and quite a workout. Final note, I lost four pounds for that game, with all the running around and sweating. This 'paid exercise' program I am on is not bad at all!
I will attempt to update the links and such during the week and get more info on next weekend's matches.
Anyway, the game was a tight one, between two teams that handled the ball very well for U9. I was impressed with the control that some girls had (one using her shoulders to control the ball). In the end, the white team came from a goal down to win 2-1 with 2 minutes left to play. The orange team I thought was marginally better, and had a better keeper, but they just ran out of gas it seems.
What was interesting was how on my toes these girls kept me. I had to pay attention to a lot more shoving and they were certainly more agressive than I thought they could be. I also had to watch for offsides more than I originally would have anticipated. They moved the ball well enough to cause problems and my positioning probably was horrible as it was my first match. But I believe I was able to make every call that needed to be called. I am sure I screwed up some throw-ins as the action sometimes was happening far enough where I was not 100% sure.
Two interesting things of note, the first was that after the match, a coach came to question one of my calls, where there was a delayed offside (a girl on the orange team was offside when her teammate attempted a pass to her, the ball was interecepted by a white player and the offside attacker when to try and take the ball away - that is when I called an offside). I had to explain that the mere fact that she was in an offside position was not enough to call offsides. As the pass was going towards her, the interception occured and I did not want to stop play as she was not at that point participating in the play, but she tried to strip the ball and that is when I determined that she was in an offside position and trying to take advantage of that from a pass that was originally going towards her. Mind you that this interaction took 2-3 seconds at the most, so I get it when refs are critizied because no one on the orange team was happy with my call, to the point where the coach questioned me after the game.
The other interesting thing was that I had a player kick a ball twice on a restart before anyone else touched it. Another ref that I spoke with a couple of weeks ago stated that he had been reffing for over 15 years and that he had never had to call it until last week. Well, I got it on my first center ever. I wonder how long will go by before I call it again (of course it is more common in rec and kids leagues like this than older more advanced leagues).
So the first one is in the books, I will be doing some AR work next weekend for the local rec league and will be trying to get some more games for next weekend, but in the meantime, I am happy with what I did yesterday. It was a tough game because of the evenness of both teams. After the final whistle, all the girls from both teams came over to thank me, and that is what I enjoyed the most. I felt that if I had not done a good job, then the coaches and the players would not have been all smiles. It was fun and quite a workout. Final note, I lost four pounds for that game, with all the running around and sweating. This 'paid exercise' program I am on is not bad at all!
I will attempt to update the links and such during the week and get more info on next weekend's matches.
Friday, September 12, 2008
My First Center
Tomorrow I will be doing my first center right before my son's game. It is a U9 Girls game. I tried to choose one that was relatively innocent and that was as close as I could find as the local rec league does not allow new refs to work the first weekend of their season (I am not sure why, though).
So even though I should be ok, I am a little bit nervous, as it will be my first game. I will have 2-3 games this weekend as a center but I should be ok, none of them are finals or even to the point where a score is kept. Once I have the initial jitters out of the way, I think it will be ok. My next challenge will be when I ref for the adult league sometime in the next two weeks.
This leads me to the next part of my post, the whole aspect of getting assignments. It boggles the mind how complex this must be. I am signed up in some way, shape or form, to officiate for six different leagues. There is the adult league that has a co-ed league and a women's only league. They send emails saying these are our games, and you email them back with the ones that you want to work. This system is simple enough.
There are two rec leagues that I am associated with, the one that is right where I live and one that is one county over. One of them requires that you tell them your availability before the season starts and they give you your list of games for the whole season right before the first weekend of the season. They have a somewhat petty rule that new refs cannot work the first weekend, so tomorrow morning we all have a meeting with them but I will not be working with them till next weekend. Their system is the poorest of all as it becomes quite inflexible. My thinking is that I will work this first season with them and then stop, but then again, my daughter plays in the league and it is easier to ref for them, for sure.
The other rec league as well as the two travel leagues that I am associated with use a site called thearbiter.net. This site is kind of an Outlook on steriods. Not very intuative, and I work in IT for a living. Still, one of the assignors was kind enough to give me a step-by-step guide, and I was able to schedule and "open" the days and times I wanted to work and theoretically, the assignors will then give you games based on your availability.
Above I say theoretically, because one of the travel leagues where I am associated with sent out an email stating that there were games with no referees and to please check them out and take the ones you wanted to work. When I opened the email, I could not believe the number of games with no ref. For tomorrow Saturday, the list was at least 35 matches long and Sunday's list was even worse. One of the games listed was my son's game, which I would rather not ref. But I did get the game prior and the game right after since I was already going to be there.
After this weekend, I hope to give a list of where I went to get games and what strategies I used to get on all these lists. There were a couple of jerks that I met along the way, and I hope to go into that as well, but for now, wish me luck for this weekend and hope those 9 year old girls don't give me a run for the money ($35).
So even though I should be ok, I am a little bit nervous, as it will be my first game. I will have 2-3 games this weekend as a center but I should be ok, none of them are finals or even to the point where a score is kept. Once I have the initial jitters out of the way, I think it will be ok. My next challenge will be when I ref for the adult league sometime in the next two weeks.
This leads me to the next part of my post, the whole aspect of getting assignments. It boggles the mind how complex this must be. I am signed up in some way, shape or form, to officiate for six different leagues. There is the adult league that has a co-ed league and a women's only league. They send emails saying these are our games, and you email them back with the ones that you want to work. This system is simple enough.
There are two rec leagues that I am associated with, the one that is right where I live and one that is one county over. One of them requires that you tell them your availability before the season starts and they give you your list of games for the whole season right before the first weekend of the season. They have a somewhat petty rule that new refs cannot work the first weekend, so tomorrow morning we all have a meeting with them but I will not be working with them till next weekend. Their system is the poorest of all as it becomes quite inflexible. My thinking is that I will work this first season with them and then stop, but then again, my daughter plays in the league and it is easier to ref for them, for sure.
The other rec league as well as the two travel leagues that I am associated with use a site called thearbiter.net. This site is kind of an Outlook on steriods. Not very intuative, and I work in IT for a living. Still, one of the assignors was kind enough to give me a step-by-step guide, and I was able to schedule and "open" the days and times I wanted to work and theoretically, the assignors will then give you games based on your availability.
Above I say theoretically, because one of the travel leagues where I am associated with sent out an email stating that there were games with no referees and to please check them out and take the ones you wanted to work. When I opened the email, I could not believe the number of games with no ref. For tomorrow Saturday, the list was at least 35 matches long and Sunday's list was even worse. One of the games listed was my son's game, which I would rather not ref. But I did get the game prior and the game right after since I was already going to be there.
After this weekend, I hope to give a list of where I went to get games and what strategies I used to get on all these lists. There were a couple of jerks that I met along the way, and I hope to go into that as well, but for now, wish me luck for this weekend and hope those 9 year old girls don't give me a run for the money ($35).
Thursday, September 11, 2008
9/11
I am not going to write much of anything today. Being in the DC area, I still remember with horror what happened 7 years ago. I drove by the Pentagon 15 minutes before the plane hit it and I still remember the smell when I went home that day. Tomorrow we can talk soccer, today, a moment of silence...
Wednesday, September 10, 2008
Getting Started
Ok, so by now, if you have ever tried to delve into the world of officiating, you know that it is like every other aspect in life. There are a lot of people or organizations that do good, or make good products and then there are those that do not but try to pass it off as the best. Those that seem to spend more on Marketing than their actual products, seem to lure you, but you have to be careful to look at everything before you leap.
In terms of buying the equipment, there are many options from many companies. I started out at OfficialSports.com because they are the 'official' place to get gear (read as more expensive). Since my goal for this first season was to just get a feel for the game, I decided to buy their starter kit with a black shirt. It arrived all nice and dandy but it set me back almost $90 for the kit with the flags, bag, shorts, socks, two ref shirts, data wallet, cards, whistle, etc.
I also bought extra shirts (yellow, red) as well as other essentials from Score Sports. They had an interesting line of items and the prices were much better than the ones from Official Sports. Shipping was much more expensive too from these people in comparison, but I suspect it was all related to the distance as Score is based in CA while Official Sports is in IL (I believe) and the shipments were coming to VA.
Finally, I bought some other shirts (long sleeves) and accessories from a place called Soccer One. Their pricing was great for the closeout stuff (the old shirts were just $10 each whereas the shirts from Official Sports range from $25 for the closeouts to $45 for each of the new official ones).
All said, I think I am in for about $300 between all the shirts (I have all 5 in short sleeve and 3 in long sleeve), ref shoes (Diadora ones that are fantastic), pants, bag and accessories. I could have spent more if I had gone with the best quality on everything and I certainly could have spent less as well. But that should give you an idea of what it takes to get started in terms of equipment.
The actual referee course cost $65 and required four evenings of my time where we got to cover the rule book, the procedures for a center referee and an AR and a ton of videos. The exam, I did not find too difficult. It consisted of 100 questions and many were based on what the restart should be if such and such happens. I got a 95% so it was not bad at all. BTW, passing score was 75% which is too low in my opinion.
I will try and get some links up to all the sites in the next couple of days (I am new to the blogging world) and will get a more detailed view of the way to actually get games as it seems hard at first, but then when you uncover the way the system works, there are plenty of games out there.
In terms of buying the equipment, there are many options from many companies. I started out at OfficialSports.com because they are the 'official' place to get gear (read as more expensive). Since my goal for this first season was to just get a feel for the game, I decided to buy their starter kit with a black shirt. It arrived all nice and dandy but it set me back almost $90 for the kit with the flags, bag, shorts, socks, two ref shirts, data wallet, cards, whistle, etc.
I also bought extra shirts (yellow, red) as well as other essentials from Score Sports. They had an interesting line of items and the prices were much better than the ones from Official Sports. Shipping was much more expensive too from these people in comparison, but I suspect it was all related to the distance as Score is based in CA while Official Sports is in IL (I believe) and the shipments were coming to VA.
Finally, I bought some other shirts (long sleeves) and accessories from a place called Soccer One. Their pricing was great for the closeout stuff (the old shirts were just $10 each whereas the shirts from Official Sports range from $25 for the closeouts to $45 for each of the new official ones).
All said, I think I am in for about $300 between all the shirts (I have all 5 in short sleeve and 3 in long sleeve), ref shoes (Diadora ones that are fantastic), pants, bag and accessories. I could have spent more if I had gone with the best quality on everything and I certainly could have spent less as well. But that should give you an idea of what it takes to get started in terms of equipment.
The actual referee course cost $65 and required four evenings of my time where we got to cover the rule book, the procedures for a center referee and an AR and a ton of videos. The exam, I did not find too difficult. It consisted of 100 questions and many were based on what the restart should be if such and such happens. I got a 95% so it was not bad at all. BTW, passing score was 75% which is too low in my opinion.
I will try and get some links up to all the sites in the next couple of days (I am new to the blogging world) and will get a more detailed view of the way to actually get games as it seems hard at first, but then when you uncover the way the system works, there are plenty of games out there.
Tuesday, September 9, 2008
YASR Kicks Off!
Welcome to my blog on all things Soccer and especially soccer refereeing and soccer as a youth sport as I have two children who play it. Just so we have context, I am married, 33 years old with two children, eight and six so even though I would love to referee most of the weekend, there are other things in life to worry about that are many times much more important than the soccer field.
In the coming days I will get more information out on what goes on regarding the matches I do and my take on things that happen. Comments are always welcome, by the way. Needless to say, I am not always right, and will have questions as well as answers. Look forward to being in contact with you all soon.
There are at least two or three other people that blog about their soccer referee experiences, one started five years ago and the other is working on his second year it seems. I will post their links as well as places where I have bought gear from shortly. I wanted to get this post in so that it would be 'in the books' but later plan on giving a more detailed breakdown of the registeration/certification process and many other details in case you want to get started on this as well.
In the coming days I will get more information out on what goes on regarding the matches I do and my take on things that happen. Comments are always welcome, by the way. Needless to say, I am not always right, and will have questions as well as answers. Look forward to being in contact with you all soon.
There are at least two or three other people that blog about their soccer referee experiences, one started five years ago and the other is working on his second year it seems. I will post their links as well as places where I have bought gear from shortly. I wanted to get this post in so that it would be 'in the books' but later plan on giving a more detailed breakdown of the registeration/certification process and many other details in case you want to get started on this as well.
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