The match that changed everything

As you know, I have said many times that I love doing matches with my daughter (and when my son was doing matches, with him as well). I thought it was a great bonding experience, we had fun and gave us something to do, together, that was akin to what some other people say they feel when they volunteer or do good, etc.

So to have a match that in my eyes ended my daughter's career or desire to referee is something I don't look fondly too. I have always tried to shield her since she wasn't as committed as my son was when he was doing it. And I am not sure if she is using the excuse to say that the match in question caused her to not want to ref anymore rather than just say that she lost the desire a while back. That is something that I am not sure she would admit to.

Anyway, the match in question, and I have to be careful of how I word it because I don't want it to be easily identifiable for the center in question since there is a lot of fallout from this match apparently.

We were not at home, but rather at a tournament elsewhere, where we were put up in a hotel, so we had a bunch of matches on Saturday and the last one was where both my daughter and I were together as ARs for a center that we both knew up in Northern VA.

Anyway, it was a bad situation, we had an issue before kick off that set the tone for a really rough match and at the end the center had to abandon the game due to threats from the sideline. My daughter says that this match, the fact that she felt we had to run for our lives (and we didn't, but it sorta felt that way at the moment) and the complete disaster that it was has given her pause and wants to not recertify.

I hold that center substantially responsible for the fact that my daughter does not want to ref anymore. She did work the Sunday matches with me and I thought she had a good time, but it seems that it wasn't enough to sway her back to reffing. I suspect she didn't really want to ref anymore and found this match as a gift as the excuse to say she didn't but the truth is that this center that I held in such high regard made a series of mistakes and let's just say, I would have handled things differently.

On the bright side, I have a lot more equipment and gear to work with now. And thankfully I had not bought my daughter the new ref shirts since we can use them until the end of 2018.