Maintenance assessment match

As you may know, here in Virginia, if you are a State referee grade 6, you need to get 2 assessments a year (July 1 to June 30) in order to maintain your grade. You also have to do the training and pass a physical fitness test (which consists of 10 laps around the track in 20 segments of sprinting and walking).

One of your assessed matches can be on a U17 or above and the other has to be an Adult match. The youth match was done early and I was getting worried that the adult league that currently is the only one in the area that is tough enough to be considered valid for assessments was not publishing matches.

So it was surprising to me when I get an email from the assignor that I had 2 games on Sunday. One was an AR and the next was my center. The teams were well known to me and we were all set. I email the person in charge of assessments and within a day, I have my assessor and we are ready to go. One of my ARs was also going to use my center match as her upgrade AR match. So great, more bang for the buck.

Fast forward to Sunday. Dreary, dark, dank and depressing. Around 4pm, we get an email from the league that the 9pm matches are cancelled. Does not affect me at all, but the impending torrential rain we are supposed to get gives me concern that perhaps no one is going to show up for the 7pm assessment match.

As we arrive to the field around 4:15, the center for the first match mentions that he is a 7 as well and was wondering if it wouldn't be too late for him to also get assessed as an AR in my assessment match. We call the person in charge of the assessments and he blesses the additional assessment. So at that point, the 7pm match, right around the time a crazy amount of rain is scheduled to come down, is now a match where all 3 officials are going to be assessed for maintenance or upgrade purposes.

There was a delay in getting the field ready and about 10 minutes before kick off, we get an email that the 7pm match is cancelled due to weather. What a dilemma because we all need the match. So I call the assessor to see if by any chance, they are close by and can make our 5pm match, our assessment match. He says yes, the coordinator says yes and we kick off 5:30 with me in the center and both ARs being assessed. Thank goodness we were not able to get the field ready and that the players were ok with starting a little later.

It turned out to be a good match, even though it was rather lopsided at the end. My ARs were spot on with their calls, I had a great play on that resulted in a yellow and a very easy second yellow in the second half that made the match level difficult.

I will expand on the "play on yellow" in the next post as this one is rather long as well as some other stuff that is blog related as I have run out of time for today. More to come tomorrow. Thanks for reading and commenting everyone.