Recert class

After passing the exam, I had on my calendar to attend the class for this year. Since I was a returning 7, all that was required was to sit through the class and see what the focus was this year. As you may recall, last year's clinic had a lot about social media and why a referee shouldn't be on it. This year, my takeaway focus was about fitness. A lot of videos on stretching and getting ready for the game, and for staying fit. It is like they were reading my mind. But other than that there wasn't much in terms of new things.

Also, a lot on head coverings and what colors were allowed (black and the predominant team color for field players). The coverings must match (that is all players who wear them must use the same color). They cannot be attached to the shirt worn by the players.

But other than that, there wasn't much that I can recall. No big rule changes for this go around other than the clarification (yet again) on offside. And to FIFA now, or at least the instructors at my class, offside player involvement means actually touching the ball not just going for it, so more and more, they want us to keep our flags down as an AR, at least that is what I took from that discussion.

How have your recert classes been going and has anyone noticed a trend since we have not really had a ton of rule changes in the past couple of years?

Recertification nonsense

For all of you out there with kids who are referees, let me give you a tidbit of advice. Do not try to do the recert exam online at the same time as your kids are trying to do their exams. The idea I had was to have everyone sit down and take the test and when they were done, go over any questions they had so we could make sure they understood the question and what the correct answer should be. Not the case.

As we sat in our morning room, with each child on their laptop and I on mine trying to determine if headscarves could be something other than black, I would be interrupted every 30 seconds by one of the two asking a question. Not reading the question, trying to understand it, analyze it and respond. No, just read the question out loud and see what I thought. It was painful and the last time I try that method. Since the tests in Virginia are 100 questions long, it made for a long afternoon.

The funny thing was that my son, who has been reffing a couple of years more than my daughter, failed his exam with a 74 and had to take it again. My daughter, who was more methodical and didn't rush her answers, got an 84 first try. He was able to take it again and get a 94 the second go around.

I took mine with those interruptions and have to admit that the questions were quite confusing sometimes. A lot of measuring had to be done. Things like ball goes out 15 yards from the left post so is it a goalkick (retake) or a corner kick. Off the top of my head, I don't remember if the distance from the post to the end of the penalty box is more or less than 15 yards (it is). Things like that made it complicated. I was able to review all the ones that I got wrong and have to admit that I disagreed with plenty of the ones I had wrong. Oh well. I passed and I guess that is all that matters.

Recert time

This is the first time that all 3 of us referees in the family have to recert. My kids are doing it at the end of this month and I will be doing it in December. The classes are sometimes hard to come by because of the fact that the weekends that you can take the class are also the weekends when one or two of the kids are playing in a tournament. Most recently, they have been out of town to boot.

So it comes as a surprise that I am having a hard time finding the 2014/2015 Laws of the Game USSF style. I must be looking in the wrong place as I have the 2013/2014 one in PDF but cannot locate the newest version. I found the FIFA version in no time flat, but the more local version has just been hard to find. The main USSF site still has the 2013/2014 rules, which I think will be good enough to have while taking the exam.

The one thing that makes me question our process is that now we test prior to taking the class, so it assumes that there are no questions or other situation that the referee wants to cover before taking the exam. Or perhaps it just makes things easier, at least for us in the Northern VA area. I wonder how things are handled elsewhere.

Just in case you are wondering, the link to all the documentation that USSF has is here:

https://ussoccer.app.box.com/s/ruqcsf0671k1bcf6dzwf

My way or the highway

This past weekend, my son and I worked a couple of higher level games at the U17 and U18 level. My son did not disappoint but he did say that this is the level of soccer he likes to work on, so I might have spoiled him in terms of working U8 or U10 rec games from here on out. In the first game, where I was center, it was a decent game but with one team really pushing to get the goal while the other played counter (and not very effectively).

White was the more aggressive team and should have put away their chances in the first half but the post said no 4 times in that half. On the other side, black had one play where there was a shot and the keeper bobbled it and then lost control, it was falling to the attacker and then the keeper sort of fell on her. I immediately said "no foul" and no one protested but at halftime, we discussed it and I had the nagging feeling that it should have been a PK. The lead AR, a grade 6 said that absolutely it should have been a PK because she misplayed the ball and the chances of the attacker scoring from that distance had she not had the keeper fall on her would have been close to 100% since it was at around the 6 where the collision happened.

In the second game, the State referee took charge and immediately you saw a difference in the two styles of refereeing. I think that if you were to compare my style with that of this grade 6 would be in the levels of accommodations. I think I was more accommodating to the style the girls wanted to play and what the coaches and players were expecting to have called.

In his game we had a lot of "what was that call all about?" moments in the game. Not that he called a bad game, but coaches, players and my guess is parents as well all had to think about what some of the calls were. Not that I think they were wrong per se, but he did call things "his way". In the first 10 minutes one coach yelled out his displeasure over a non call (that was called, just waiting for advantage to dissipate) and the center looked over and said "enough" very clearly. While the coach chipped away some more in terms of comments later in the half, he did not make them public enough for the center to hear, so he got away with them. I did mention to the center that he was making those comments but part of me thought that the coach was right, since I couldn't make out some of the calls or the logic myself. Since he didn't hear them, he was ok with them if I was ok with them is how we decided to measure the level of dissent.

In the second half, the other team's coach wanted to have a conversation about a perceived foul on one of his players. The center comes over and immediately states that he is not going to have a conversation. "No more", "enough" and such were stated by the center making it clear that he did not want to hear about the alleged knee in the back that the coach wanted some commentary on. After the 4th time (in a span of 30 seconds) we went from ask, tell, dismiss to almost abandoning the game. The coach could not believe that the referee did not want to hear his side of the story and kept saying "but she got kneed in the back", "you have to protect the players" and "the other coach has been talking all game". To answer to the coach (again, I can see some of his side because to call the level of refereeing erratic would have been an understatement), however, the kneeing was called with an advantage call and I think the center was going to admonish the person who committed it had the coach not asked for more attention and the protection of players was never a problem with this center and the other coach said everything he said after the first public comment loud enough for the benches to hear but not the center.

He sent him packing but then after the game, the coach came back. Big mistake. That one game suspension probably doubled or tripled when he tried to have another conversation with the referee. But it does mean more paperwork for everyone involved. Good to see my son got exposed to that without being the brunt of the problem. More to come on the fallout as I have it.

Silent treatment

A week ago, I went to a Columbus Day tournament with my son as referees. We took advantage of being outsiders so we got a hotel room provided by the referee committee to referee there. My son did all ARs (8 in total) and I did a mix of centers and ARs over the weekend. It was fun and I got to try out my more quiet side of reffing since two people had recently remarked how chatty I was.

In my first game as a center, I really did not talk much at all. A lot of blowing my whistle for fouls or for admin stuff (like substitutions or the like) but no talking to players unless I absolutely had to. 10 minutes into the first half, a play in the box that the red coach goes crazy for a PK. I did not give it, did not even bellow a "NO!" which is what I normally do on a play that I am not going to call a foul on. Coach continues for a few seconds and when the ball goes out of play, I position myself close to the coach and make eye contact while doing the zipper across the lips. And I get an acknowledging nod. It worked!

For the rest of the game, it went well but I noticed something. At least for me, when I talk to players more, I am always adjusting my bar of what constitutes a foul and what doesn't as the game goes on, the tempo, the score, etc. I noticed I needed to adjust less when not talking. At least in my mind, the bar was less mobile. Maybe because I expressed less of what I was going to allow vs not allow? Not sure why.

In my other games, it was less effective and I had to walk over to coaches and tell them to pipe down in another game. I really wasn't focusing on doing the silent treatment so I didn't do it as effectively. I need to make sure that until I get it down pat and it is second nature that I really concentrate to make sure I am doing that. I just find it hard because it is not who I am truthfully. We will see if it works out in the long run, but I am going to try that, focus on not talking as much to players and coaches. It does give things a more professional vibe to my matches, but then to me it seems like it is more of a "job" and less "fun". We will see what works and what doesn't after I have had more time to work this angle.

Public Talking

Just when you think you can no longer learn new things at one's craft, things take a turn for the better. Over the last two weekends, two senior referees gave me the same piece of advice. Essentially, don't talk so much during certain parts of the game.

In the first instance, this was a senior referee who did very high levels and was stepping down, essentially, to do a U18 girls game. First, his threshold of fouls was essentially no blood no foul. When we spoke about the levels of competition, he stated that most people's threshold was a little lower and he was fine with that. I can see a lot of injuries coming from his games if man-management is not in the cards for him.

Still, he said that when he ARed my game (which was a U16 girls game) he thought I spoke too much, like when there was a throw in, and I would sometimes say, red throw or white throw, he said to never do that. The players have been trained to look at your hand signals so no need to give them verbal instructions or to say it out loud. I can see where that makes sense.

Then this last weekend, in a U12 match, I had another AR who I respected quite well tell me the same thing. Don't say it, let them figure it out, look at your signals instead. Get them to look at you instead of hearing your voice.

I guess the problem is that I do too many different age groups. That would never fly at the U10 level, even in travel and would certainly not fly in Rec at all, since most of them still need help figuring things out. But for the older age groups, it makes sense.

So on Sunday, my daughter played and her center was a State Referee. I paid attention to how much he spoke with the girls. Zero. I don't think he spoke a word to them. He would let his whistle do the communicating. Foul, whistle. Substitution, two short tweets. I want you to take 3 steps back, whistle.

I don't think I can do it quite like that, but I will focus on making more of my presence known through the whistle and less with chatting. Don't know how it will work out, because it is in essence, not who I am, but let's see how this goes.

Happiest I've been

I enjoy being out there on the field. I enjoy running around, helping the kids, trying to call good games and let things be fair. I really like that. But this weekend I had the best experience ever. My son was playing in State Cup and then also his regular league so when we started getting all these last minute game requests I figured we could get one in. He stated in no uncertain terms that he just wanted to chill.

Side note, what is up with Northern VA? I received emails asking for referees and those lists were LONG. On Friday, there were 80 some games at the travel level that had incomplete referee crews (either no center or missing ARs). More referees are needed, that is for sure.

Anyway, getting back to my story, I finally convinced my son to come out and do a game. It was a U19 Travel game. Him being almost 15 was actually two fold. He got to see soccer at slightly a higher level and he got to see what it takes to ref when getting the fouls right is not the only task and man management is more the key factor to keeping the game in check. There were about 20+ fouls, a PK, an injury to a keeper, 5 yellows and a bunch of stuff that his level of soccer doesn't do yet (like trying to take someone out and playing through hard fouls). At the end he said that he had had a blast, had not looked at his watch in the 90 minutes and that he could get used to reffing at that level. What he has realized up to now is that he doesn't like reffing the little kids where boredom sets in.

All during the match I was just smiling, because I was doing something I loved, it was a beautiful afternoon, the kids were playing hard but fair for the most part and I was doing it with someone I loved. To have him tell me that he enjoyed it was the cherry on top.

He also learned something important in the game that he had not seen before. White clears the ball and the ball travels about 40 yards. Blue tries to head the ball but does a sloppy job of it and the ball goes to an attacker in the offside position. He raises his flag and I wave him down as it was a controlled header (just a bad one) instead of a deflection. He says that the moment I waved him down, it hit him and that it was good to finally see that play in action rather than just read about it. All in all, one of my best days as a referee.