Saturday, November 28, 2009

Quick note

Happy Thanksgiving everyone.

Without going into too much detail about the recert class, I wanted to let you all know that I passed with a 72 out of 75. And I still have an issue with two of the ones that I got wrong, but that is neither here nor there. It all boils down to the fact that I guess I will be reffing again in 2010 and you may have to put up with me for another season. Lucky you.

Tuesday, November 24, 2009

Of Tournaments and Fauna

Interesting stories from this week’s tournament. I will break it down in three distinct stories: a) The Tiny Ref, b) The Late Ref and c) The Non Ref

So for starters, this was a tournament weekend, a closeout weekend as the season is winding down to a close. There are a couple of tournaments scattered throughout the DC area, and this one was fortunately, closest to home. In the past, the assignor who gives me matches for this tournament (and the others that he assigns for) has always used me as a backup ref at the site where my son's team plays. And I have never had to actually sub in for a ref. I was once given a match by the site coordinator back in March of this year, but the assigned ref showed up in the nick of time. But I digress...

The Tiny Ref

As you can imagine, this pertains to a ref that did my son's U10 matches. He was shorter than some of the kids on either team. I am not sure if he knew all the rules or if he had a whistle, because he really only used it for the kick-offs and then for half time. I do believe he did not call a single foul until 3 minutes before the end of the match and it was a questionable call in my eyes. But the fact that he must not have been over 13 made it the most interesting thing. I am a firm believer in having referees train but during tournaments, parents paid a decent chunk of change to have their kids play special matches, and though he was not terrible, he certainly did not give the impression he really knew what was going on so of course, parents were not happy. And in the end, if parents are not happy, they take their tournament dollars elsewhere. I saw a lot of frustration over the reffing in general because of the inconsistancy of the whistle blowing. My guess is that if you do not like the officiating, you will probably not be back next year for that tournament. And some of the blame I have to lay it on the assignor who may have blindly given the matches to a 13 year old.

The Late Ref

On Sunday, I had an early start. The first match was to begin at 7:30am. It was cold and fairly dark still when I arrived at the field at 7:05am. The other AR arrived with me and we began chatting. The fields looked terrible. They were Bermuda grass that I later found out, turns yellow and basically looks dead upon first frost of the season and that is why they looked bad. To top it off, there were several field markings, all in while, against the pale yellow of the Bermuda grass, which made an AR’s job all that more complicated.

By 7:20, our center had not arrived, so while the other AR checked the teams in, I ran over to the ref tent and let them know that we may need another ref for our match in 10 minutes. 5 minutes later we get someone coming over. He introduces himself and he is not the scheduled ref, but rather the backup. While we are standing there, he does manage to confirm my suspicion that he is rather cocky and eccentric by some of the comments he makes. He said things like “This level is so easy compared to the semi-pro that I normally do, but oh well…” (we were about to do a U15 boys Elite flight level match, so it should not be that easy).

Right before the start of the match, another ref lumbers on to the field and we come to find out that he was the ref that was supposed to be here to center the match originally. He and the eccentric ref get into a little discussion and in the end, eccentric tells him “I do not care if you got here late. It is my match now because it is no longer your match. You can watch the match from the sideline or the ref tent, but get off my field.” And here I thought we were a community of brothers.

So the match starts and the eccentric ref is one of those chatty ones, with strange calls, late calls and everything else we are taught not to be. He becomes the star of the match and at the end, when we go over the final score and the cards, he states he gave 5 yellow cards during the match. I saw only one.

For the next match, the shunned referee comes on to the field as my AR, still complaining about the match that he was supposed to center. But I notice one weird thing, he did not have a US badge on his uniform, but rather a FIFA badge. I asked him if he was still certified (his badge had a small 98 on the bottom, so I thought he was not still certified for FIFA but I had to ask). He said he was from Cameroon and had received his FIFA badge there and worked the African Cup of Nations as an AR (I could not verify this on Wikipedia as they did not list the AR’s names, only who centered each match and I am not going to dig that much further). Still, I am not sure he should be wearing a 10 year old FIFA badge instead of the current US badge.

The Non Ref

This one was more entertaining than anything else, but while on my break I was watching the action unfold on two fields when all of a sudden, one of the ARs starts to wiggle his flag like crazy to indicate that something was wrong. Then I look over and a deer was sprinting across the field on the half where play was not occurring. I do not think that the center on that field even realized since it happened so quick. Then the deer leapt over some chairs and bound up the hill to the other field, where she squeezed in between the goalpost and the keeper (who again, did not realize until the deer was long gone) before jumping over a ditch, in between cars and over a fence to disappear into the woods behind the fields. Not often do you get that type of close up with wildlife when reffing (unless you consider some of the parents wildlife).

This coming week I am doing my 2010 certification and hope to have some more information on what we are going to be focusing on this coming year. Come to think of it, I have not had to do the certification for three seasons now, because I received my in August 2008, which already gave me the 2009 badge.

In the coming weeks I will have that as well as the ref seminar in January and a high school training session. So this winter should not be a quiet one.

Friday, November 20, 2009

Bad Clubs

I am not sure how much I want to say about this, but I have been mulling over the fact that there are a couple of clubs in the area that are just bad clubs. The coaches, parents, and most everyone else associated with the clubs are just mean, crummy people, or they act that way on Sunday at least.

For the most part, whenever I do matches for these clubs, I know I am going to have to be extra cautious, and that they will not be happy with the performance of the referee squad unless their team comes out ahead. These two clubs are fairly similar in location and in general are probably worse off economically than most of the other areas.

I have had my fair share of mean people, but this is more of a systematic, endemic thing going on with these two clubs. It is almost everyone, it is almost like they feed off of each other. I am sure that if I were to talk to some of them alone, they would seem fine, but when they arrive at the field and everyone that they know are all yelling and screaming at the kids, officials, coaches, etc. it is similar to mass hysteria.

Again, this is not a rant on the socio-economic situation of the clubs, but I wonder if that has something to do with it. I hope to pick up this rant later, I want to see where we can go with it but it is late now and I am tired. Talk to you all soon.

Tuesday, November 17, 2009

But it is so nice out

The weather dealt me a delayed blow. In the most lucrative weekend of the year (for regular season soccer), I was dealt the equivalent of a snake eyes. The assignor pays a premium for working the playoffs of one of the rec leagues. During the regular season, those matches are not in high demand, but if you are willing to do them, he then rewards you at the end of the season with matches that pay very well for the playoffs. For 70 minute matches, you would receive $50 for a center and $30 for an AR. I had 3 centers and one AR, so I was looking at an extra $180.

It rained Tuesday through Friday and on Saturday, they make the decision to close the grass fields and not the turf fields. Sure enough I was on grass. To make matters worse, it turned out to be a decent day. Sunday was even better, but I come to find out that since the semi-finals were not played on Saturday, there would be no finals for Sunday either. So I did not get a chance to work either day. Still, I am not going to complain too much as I have to go by and collect my check from the assignor tonight and I have a good idea of how much will be in there, and it is decent to say the least.

This next weekend, I am doing the last tournament of the season. Last year it should have been called the icycle tournament as it was really cold, and there were some matches scheduled at 7:30am! This season, I am a backup ref on Saturday and Sunday I am working the U15 boys and U14 girls. We will see how all that goes but it should be fun.

Monday, November 9, 2009

Follow up from last week

I still have to sort out some things from this past weekend, it was another good weekend for some decent soccer but I did want to follow up from last weekend on my comment about my son's match.

My son plays U10 travel and many times, I am asked to help as an AR in his matches. The match was a blowout and at one point with the match at 6-0 or something like that and me perched right in front of the visiting team's bench, my son's team plays a ball from defense that makes it past all their defenders (who were on the attacking half). There was one boy on my son's team perched at midfield and when the pass (or clearance) goes by, he takes off. He was clearly onside as he was right behind the midfield line and the ball passed him before he made his run, so I held my flag down. SIDE NOTE: As a non-paid AR, I asked the center if he wanted me to flag things as normal, as if I were a real AR or just help with the out-of-bounds stuff. He said to do the full thing.

When the kid makes the run for the ball, I start running down the line and from my back I hear, "Hey Ref that was..." It was the coach of the other team. I could not believe he was giving me lip about my non-offside call. So as I am running away from him, I look back and say, "Please coach, do not give me any of that" in a tone that was not very civil.

When the play finishes I run back and expect to hear a ton of "he was clearly off-side" and "how can you be an AR" etc. so I said before he could say anything, "I do not want to hear it" to which he answers, "but that was a great call, all I wanted to tell you is that you did very well in holding the flag down".

I need to stop being such a hot head. Another lesson learned.

Wednesday, November 4, 2009

Too bad I can't make them all cry

This past weekend I worked both days with interesting stories on each day, mostly anecdotal stuff, nothing really hard core ref related, at least on Saturday. On Sunday (in my next post), there is more juicy ref content.

Saturday I was slated to work 3 matches, U12 and U10 boys in the local rec league. Not particularly complicated matches, but the interesting thing about rec matches is that the parents are always keeping score and that the disparity in the level of play is always something to consider since you want people to have fun but you have to be mindful that the really good players are going to stand out...

First story of the day was that I seemed to have a knack for making the boys cry. In the first match, one team has a breakaway and a defender runs stride by stride with the attacker and is yelling at him like a marauding Viking all the way down. The attacker does not flinch and scores, but after the goal, I told the boy that he cannot yell to attempt to distract the attacker and that in a regular match that would be a yellow card.

I am not sure if he misunderstood or if maybe I was not age-appropriate in my language (though my 10 year old son would have understood) but he immediately looked at me and started balling. I had to explain to the coach what I said to the boy and he did not return to the field till the second half. And without incident, so at least it was not that bad.

In the second match, there were two terribly mismatched teams. One was very good, with 2-3 players that could have easily played travel and the other was one that barely had the basic notion of what soccer was. On the latter team, there was one child who knew one thing, attack the ball, get the ball and the concept of not fouling in the process was somewhat fuzzy. I counted 5 fouls from him in the first half. In the second half, with him team down 3-1, he really started laying it on thick. When his foul count approached double digits, I told him I had just about had enough of his fouling (and in hindsight, I should have talked to him sooner) and then when he fouled again, I asked the coach to sub him out since this league does not permit yellow or red cards unless something terrible happens. He was subbed and started tearing up as he walked off the field. Fortunately, with only 3 minutes left in the match, he did not return.

For the last match of the day, I did not have any crier, so at least I had that going for me, but seriously, I have to make sure that I choose a lighter tone when addressing children. I guess I have that personality that can come off as gruff and the boys did not respond well to it. Another lesson learned.

As a side note, on the last match, it felt like we regressed into medival times or something similar. One the yellow team there were two boys with distinctly strange names. One boy was almost my height (5'9") and his name was Thor. Yes, as in Odin's son. And then there was another boy named Augustus. Nothing interesting about the match, but the names served as some comic relief as the rain started to come down towards the end of the match.

In my next installment, I will describe another learning experience I had in my son's travel match with the other team's coach.