I am not going to bore you with the details of some of the games I have been assigned lately, a lot of U13-U14 girls and boys matches that are either very light or overly aggressive. But mostly, U13 girls, just moved into a large field, is like watching paint dry, they move the ball well enough, there is little contact and goals (rare as they are) are only scored within the 6 it seems. It has to be my least favorite age group.
There is one call that I will bring up during my center of a U15 girls match. The defender has the ball on the left flank and pressured by an attacker. The defender is facing her own goal and a teammate towards the penalty spot is calling for the ball. She passes it to her but then the keeper tells the teammate to back off and then proceeds to collect the ball with her hands. I blow my whistle as a passback but the gold team swarms me saying it was not intentional. And I had to think about it for an extra second. The intention to pass to the general vicinity of the keeper was clear, though she was probably not the intended target at the time of the pass, but I have to think full well that the keeper knew she was not allowed to pick it up. So in so many words, I explained it to the girls.
I knew I made the right call when my AR backed me up, but even more so when the coach of the team that was penalized did as well.
I have a couple of more stories from these last two weekends, just not enough time to detail it all out just now.
Wednesday, September 23, 2009
Saturday, September 12, 2009
Three Week Recap
Week 1
U13 and U14 boys on Saturday. Games are being played on a turf field with marking for soccer, football, lacrosse and others given the fact that there were white, yellow, blue and red/orange lines on the ground. The matches were nothing spectacular, but it was interesting that I called a PK on one of the matches I was the center and mistakenly used a football extra point line instead of the PK spot. The kick still went in, so no big deal, but still, something to learn. Also, on another match, the team was using yellow for the goalkeeper, and so we needed to change to another color, but one of the ARs had no other color. Not a good start for him.
Sunday was just U15 girls, nothing special there.
Week 2
U 15 boys on Saturday, very well played games, but one club's parents were obnoxious to the point of no return. As an AR in one of the matches that they lost, they gave me hell for not calling an offsides which I saw as onside. But their comments were to the tune of, "What do you expect when he has sunglasses". Like that is going to make a big difference, but yet, it lead me to realize that when you are doing the AR with the parents involved, it does not pay to carry a conversation with them as they can turn on you.
Week 3
The most boring two ARs I have done in a long time. I do not think I had to actually run at any time, just trot. Painful.
U13 and U14 boys on Saturday. Games are being played on a turf field with marking for soccer, football, lacrosse and others given the fact that there were white, yellow, blue and red/orange lines on the ground. The matches were nothing spectacular, but it was interesting that I called a PK on one of the matches I was the center and mistakenly used a football extra point line instead of the PK spot. The kick still went in, so no big deal, but still, something to learn. Also, on another match, the team was using yellow for the goalkeeper, and so we needed to change to another color, but one of the ARs had no other color. Not a good start for him.
Sunday was just U15 girls, nothing special there.
Week 2
U 15 boys on Saturday, very well played games, but one club's parents were obnoxious to the point of no return. As an AR in one of the matches that they lost, they gave me hell for not calling an offsides which I saw as onside. But their comments were to the tune of, "What do you expect when he has sunglasses". Like that is going to make a big difference, but yet, it lead me to realize that when you are doing the AR with the parents involved, it does not pay to carry a conversation with them as they can turn on you.
Week 3
The most boring two ARs I have done in a long time. I do not think I had to actually run at any time, just trot. Painful.
Thursday, August 27, 2009
Back to the field
It is that time again, when the pre-season tournaments abound and everyone is getting ready for some soccer. I received my assignments for this Saturday and Sunday, they are U14 boys and U14 and U19 girls. Eight matches in total, 5 as AR and 3 as center. No complaints there. I will only be able to see my son's first match unfortunately and if he gets to the final, perhaps see that one as well.
As for the matches and the team I am getting, I do not know them that well, so we will have to wait and see what we get. I am re-reading the USSF Laws of the Game as I normally do before the start of the season to make sure I have things down correctly.
As for the matches and the team I am getting, I do not know them that well, so we will have to wait and see what we get. I am re-reading the USSF Laws of the Game as I normally do before the start of the season to make sure I have things down correctly.
Monday, August 24, 2009
Minor update
Nothing too insteresting this weekend, there was a Saturday set of friendlies my son was participating in, and they were using older kids as referees. I volunteered to help out but there was no need. The only thing I wish these kids would have done better is to stay closer to the play and to blow their whistle louder. No one was sure if the ball was out, or what the calls were. But in the end there was little else to tell them, if someone had asked. I am not sure that they were registered refs to begin with, but it was all for friendlies and in the end it was just a warm up for the season.
But next week is looking good, I have a bunch of ARs and centers coming up, 8 for this coming weekend. U19, U13 and U14. Should be a good time. More to come.
But next week is looking good, I have a bunch of ARs and centers coming up, 8 for this coming weekend. U19, U13 and U14. Should be a good time. More to come.
Thursday, August 13, 2009
Away for a while
Not much to report on the refereeing front. To tell you the truth, I have not missed it that much. But in a couple of weeks, I return to the action with a tournament and that should be a good indication of how the season will go. I will fill you in as it happens. These last couple of months have been good though without soccer reffing to worry about, but the season is slowly approaching. My son plays in a couple of tournaments prior to the start of the regular season and the following weekend, I will get to see the matches and critique our fellow referees (hopefully on how well they did).
Tuesday, July 7, 2009
Second Season in the books
Though technically, the end of the season is not until the end of July, for all purposes here, I am ending the season. I have a document where I keep all my matches that list time, date, location and other particulars to be able to say with some degree of certainly how many matches I have done at any given time. I also have a column for how much I am making for each match. That then gets summed up in another column. Once a check comes in, I note it and deduct it from the sum. Well, today the number between the payments per match and that of how much I have been paid is zero, so I am closing out the season.
I have a couple of season tournaments that I may be doing, but there is not much time to spare, in late August the season starts again, and I have to recertify before the end of the season, so there should be a lot going on. More on those topics in later posts.
For today, I want to give out some rough numbers on the second season and hopefully come to some conclusions and comparisons to the first.
Number of matches refereed: 52
Centers: 33
ARs: 19
I did most of my reffing with the local league here, and with my son in travel (as well as my daughter now dangerously close to entering that as well) I would say that for the time being, doing just the local club matches should be fine. Getting these many matches certainly kept me in shape, and I made some extra cash to help with these lean financial times. And I think I did pretty well doing what I needed to do for the good of the game.
I am going to see about setting goals for myself closer to the start of the new season, which could be a successful recert, aim for a Grade 7 upgrade, or help out more with other leagues, etc. I will let you know once I know exactly what that goal or goals are.
For now, it is some time to get back to work, as my day job has been brutal, and the kids. Enjoy them while they still want to be with their father. Reffing takes a back seat to that, any time.
I have a couple of season tournaments that I may be doing, but there is not much time to spare, in late August the season starts again, and I have to recertify before the end of the season, so there should be a lot going on. More on those topics in later posts.
For today, I want to give out some rough numbers on the second season and hopefully come to some conclusions and comparisons to the first.
Number of matches refereed: 52
Centers: 33
ARs: 19
I did most of my reffing with the local league here, and with my son in travel (as well as my daughter now dangerously close to entering that as well) I would say that for the time being, doing just the local club matches should be fine. Getting these many matches certainly kept me in shape, and I made some extra cash to help with these lean financial times. And I think I did pretty well doing what I needed to do for the good of the game.
I am going to see about setting goals for myself closer to the start of the new season, which could be a successful recert, aim for a Grade 7 upgrade, or help out more with other leagues, etc. I will let you know once I know exactly what that goal or goals are.
For now, it is some time to get back to work, as my day job has been brutal, and the kids. Enjoy them while they still want to be with their father. Reffing takes a back seat to that, any time.
Thursday, June 25, 2009
Updating on a newer machine
Before I go off on my soccer related incursion, I wanted to comment that I am writing this entry on a machine I put together that is running the beta version of Windows 7. It is really cool, fast and basically everything Vista should have been.
Ok, back to soccer. I had wanted to write up after the last match of the regular season and that final weekend where I had 5 matches, but I could not find the time with work being just unreal, so I am going to have to write about the two last weeks together and basically one specific thing, penalty kicks. In my two seasons, I had never had a game where I was reffing go to PKs and I wanted to get that out of the way.
On Saturday of the regular season, in the rec league, the U14 girls that I was reffing as an AR went to PKs on a 1-1 match. It was the postseason so they had to have a winner. In this contest, I was asked to work the center circle, so basically, I would coordinate the kickers and make sure that they were taking their turns, at the ready and backup for the scoring, just in case. It was fun, but little did I know that the following week would be more still.
This past weekend, I did a father's day tournament and when I got my assignments, it was a doozy, U19 Boys. I was thrilled as it meant that they would be good and there would be some decent action. I did six matches for the tournament, two centers and four ARs, but boy did I have an awesome experience at the center on Sunday.
Before arriving at the field, I knew that I had one of the finals for the U19 boys. As it turned out, I had the D1 final, and the teams knew each other well, had played twice already in the regular season and there was no love lost between the teams.
To make matters worse, I was still trying to overcome the experience from a couple of weeks ago when all the parents wanted to eat me up. One thing about this tournament was that many players at this age group were already men and they were playing in the U19 boys rec championship because it was much more financially viable than playing travel (or so I was told by a couple of people at the tournament). So in essence, these kids were probably just as good as the kids that did travel, but just did not have the means to pay for travel soccer.
Anyway, the game went well. I called it a little tighter than I would have (on Saturday I had one center say that at this age group he called practically nothing, and on Sunday, I had another center say that at this age group she called practically everything, so I went with something in the middle). And the orange team was far more physical than the Blue team. But the other thing that I did for them was to say out loud when I was not going to call a foul or call handling. I would yell "No foul, play on" or "No hands, play on" so that they would immediately focus back on the match and not at trying to get my attention to see if I had seen what they would be complaining about. This lowered their whining a bit (I got a lot more whining on my Saturday center and thought this would help, it did).
Blue scored first with 4 minutes left in the first half on a free kick and then Orange tied it up 4 minutes in to the second half. It truly was a great match. In the end they went to PKs and I froze when I was going to do the coin toss. I could not remember the procedure, so what I did was give Orange the chance to call it and they won the toss, so I let them choose to either kick first or second. Orange had the better goalie and they thought that they were better when it came to taking the PKs but Blue only had one stopped by the keeper while Orange missed two that hit the goalposts and out.
And finally, in my last center of my second season I had my PKs as a center. I am sure that I will rue most of those next however many PK shootouts I will have as a ref, but I certainly enjoyed this one. It was a great match played by two great teams and I was smack dab in the middle of it, so I got that going for me.
Ok, back to soccer. I had wanted to write up after the last match of the regular season and that final weekend where I had 5 matches, but I could not find the time with work being just unreal, so I am going to have to write about the two last weeks together and basically one specific thing, penalty kicks. In my two seasons, I had never had a game where I was reffing go to PKs and I wanted to get that out of the way.
On Saturday of the regular season, in the rec league, the U14 girls that I was reffing as an AR went to PKs on a 1-1 match. It was the postseason so they had to have a winner. In this contest, I was asked to work the center circle, so basically, I would coordinate the kickers and make sure that they were taking their turns, at the ready and backup for the scoring, just in case. It was fun, but little did I know that the following week would be more still.
This past weekend, I did a father's day tournament and when I got my assignments, it was a doozy, U19 Boys. I was thrilled as it meant that they would be good and there would be some decent action. I did six matches for the tournament, two centers and four ARs, but boy did I have an awesome experience at the center on Sunday.
Before arriving at the field, I knew that I had one of the finals for the U19 boys. As it turned out, I had the D1 final, and the teams knew each other well, had played twice already in the regular season and there was no love lost between the teams.
To make matters worse, I was still trying to overcome the experience from a couple of weeks ago when all the parents wanted to eat me up. One thing about this tournament was that many players at this age group were already men and they were playing in the U19 boys rec championship because it was much more financially viable than playing travel (or so I was told by a couple of people at the tournament). So in essence, these kids were probably just as good as the kids that did travel, but just did not have the means to pay for travel soccer.
Anyway, the game went well. I called it a little tighter than I would have (on Saturday I had one center say that at this age group he called practically nothing, and on Sunday, I had another center say that at this age group she called practically everything, so I went with something in the middle). And the orange team was far more physical than the Blue team. But the other thing that I did for them was to say out loud when I was not going to call a foul or call handling. I would yell "No foul, play on" or "No hands, play on" so that they would immediately focus back on the match and not at trying to get my attention to see if I had seen what they would be complaining about. This lowered their whining a bit (I got a lot more whining on my Saturday center and thought this would help, it did).
Blue scored first with 4 minutes left in the first half on a free kick and then Orange tied it up 4 minutes in to the second half. It truly was a great match. In the end they went to PKs and I froze when I was going to do the coin toss. I could not remember the procedure, so what I did was give Orange the chance to call it and they won the toss, so I let them choose to either kick first or second. Orange had the better goalie and they thought that they were better when it came to taking the PKs but Blue only had one stopped by the keeper while Orange missed two that hit the goalposts and out.
And finally, in my last center of my second season I had my PKs as a center. I am sure that I will rue most of those next however many PK shootouts I will have as a ref, but I certainly enjoyed this one. It was a great match played by two great teams and I was smack dab in the middle of it, so I got that going for me.
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