Excitement

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.