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.
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