What a beautiful day - for no soccer

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.