Great response. On the negative side of things in Iowa, we no longer do the Terry Vaughn Referee Academy because the attendance numbers just aren't there anymore. At its peak, we would almost sell out a good sized high school auditorium. By the time of the last in-person session, we were down to about 200 people or so. I fully realize I'm yelling at clouds (or fill in your more colorful metaphor about wasting time), but the current state of USSF referee recertification is taking away the human element all else equal. When we would have TVRA, we would have several hundred referees interacting. We would have presenters like Mark Geiger and Corey Rockwell present general sessions (Agree with you - Geiger is a FANTASTIC clinician. It's so obvious he's a teacher by trade). We would have breakout sessions where we would ask questions and get responses from not only the presenters, but those in the crowd. We'd eat lunch together and network. The current recertification method is, quite honestly, not close to sufficient for real work. I know I've ticked off some assignors this year because I've made a conscious effort to work onfield less and mentor/coach more. But for me, it's a question of what will bring more value to the referee community overall. Sure, I can work more games. But if I can get 10 new referees AND RETAIN THEM, that's going to be a lot more valuable. I'm at the stage in life where 1) I really don't need the income from refereeing - even though it is nice to have that to fund my kid's club soccer for the next couple of years!! and 2) I'll take a lot more enjoyment out of seeing a bunch of referees I've mentored working high school in a couple of years and college games in five years. But more than anything else I've seen, referees will keep showing up if they know someone's in their corner when the inevitable bad game or boorish parent/coach occurs. Happens in a lot of other walks of life as well - once you feel like you aren't valued or supported, you'll look elsewhere for that support. I know I've steered away from the current discussion of whether attending an event cross-country and paying your own way is a benefit. But in the broader context of officiating, we have to get back to more personal connections as part of the educational experience.
Personal connections with refereeing are definitely a large part of the enjoyment. Not even from an educational standpoint. I know that the adult amateur matches that I will do solo are nowhere near as fun as camaraderie I get from 2-3 person crews where we can talk in between halves/games and share stories
I don't know if I'm agreeing or disagreeing with this post. Maybe it just depends on the shape of the game in your area or mine. I've been at this so long that everybody my age has retired from refereeing. For high school, it's luck of the draw who I'm working with, I don't recognize their names and I will probably not work with them again at least not in this season. For college, this year, for example, I did maybe half of my games with people from about four other guys that seem to work together a lot. Many of my men's league games are solo. But when I do those games, many of the players are people that I've been refereeing for decades. They know me and I know them, for better or worse, but mostly for the better. When I did an O-65 game last summer, there were a lot of guys there I hadn't seen in five or ten years. Lots of smiles, pats on the back and a few hugs, disrespecting the young referees that do their games because "they just don't understand us.' Feels like home. One referee friend played in Germany and then on a NASL reserve team (the original NASL) when he came here. As an adult, he played in the men's league. After he became a referee, about age 40, he once told me that, as a player, he didn't want to have anything to do with refereeing, because they always seemed like loners with no social connections. But, he said, once he became a referee, he realized how much socializing there is within the referee community.
sorry realized I never answered this after playing catch up at work. The context was more personalized for me and I realize I left out some helpful info out. The referee coach said when I called fouls in the middle third I had a tendency to hang out around the foul instead of moving to the next phase of play. He said that is fine for youth matches because I am fairly fit but as I aspire to work the more professional games he said if they set it and play, I am going to find myself way out of position as they move into the next phase of play (aka Penalty Area) and that could hurt me. If I chose to manage that's fine, just stick around and make it ceremonial if I manage if not get out the way. He made the point of youth vs. amateur matches because he is familiar with where I work. He also said that in these youth matches (not always) but there is less likely for a need to manage since they're mostly well behaved MLSNext players and not the trouble adult players. YMMV. There is not just MLSNext events there is GA, ECNL, USYSA, etc. I'd encourage them to work something like USYSA first then make the jump to GA/ECNL then MLSNext. But for some others MLSNext has been strategic with where they're hosting some of the events. They're doing 1 event on the west, 1 event in the East, 1 event in the midwest. I'd also check out GA or ECNL (I've never been to those) but if they're looking for feedback someone told me that all the GA games at the events had assessors giving regional assessments if you wanted.
This has been my experience in football and lacrosse. For basketball, I have had administrators on site who would back me up at high school and college games.
I will not be surprised if the shutting down of game officials leads to another exodus of referees like occurred after 2020 because they don’t want to deal with this. You can have 5-6 local leagues and each one uses a different assigning platform now. It is going to be extremely difficult trying to balance which leagues are in which sites, which ones have apps bs browser only, managing how to do everything on each one, keeping your availabilities updates and assignments straight. I know that competition is supposed to be good for consumers, but they just keep making soccer refereeing, an already unappealing thing for most of the population, even more unappealing. For people who belong to a bunch of different leagues, it’s going to almost feel like a part time job just keeping track of everything each week
Yeah, I cannot emphasize how much I hate this. I basically have 5 main assignors and 4 of them use different systems. I need to stay on top of those 4 systems to referee matches at the levels I want to referee. Then there are more assignors I occasionally will work a few games for here or there to help out and stay involved at all levels, but those assignors have since changed systems too. Assignr, Assignrefs, a few adult leagues have not even identified what system they will use. USYS State Cup has changed their system. The list goes on. Refereeing well these days requires so much commitment. It's good for the game, good for the overall standard, but it's hard. If you want to be good good, you need to budget for educational training/webinars, for fitness, for injury prevention, for nutrition, for travel, for research on teams, for self-assessment, for updating assigning platforms, for sleep. It's like 20-25 hours a week or more, not including the ideal 8 hours of sleep as recovery. It's hard! I think the grassroots game will suffer from this. Refs will stick to only a few assignors. I personally keep getting emails this offseason from various assignors in my area about creating new accounts so I can ref their games. I don't want to create new accounts, new passwords, etc. I don't want to invite more administrative work in my ref career updating availability. I don't particularly want to referee these games anyway, especially when I could be doing other things to relax or enjoy the limited free time I have. The added demands of keeping up with these assigning platforms is almost certainly going to lead me personally to referee fewer matches next season because of this. And the games I'm probably not going to referee are probably the local game 20 minutes away where they need a 3-man crew and can't find one, or the AR assignment for a young-up-and-comer, or the adult O40 game where two boisterous teams need someone who cares and will work hard out there. I won't know about them because I'm not creating my 8th account. I expect that to be consistent among other refs too.
I am surprised US Soccer doesn't contract a software engineering consulting business to make their own now that GO is out. I know they tried and failed but it is not that hard. I guess everyone has different needs and budgets.
Ref Insight is coming on... give that a couple more years to work out the kinks and maybe that will be the choice. But at the moment, US Soccer has been stuck in a bad deal with Demosphere which I hope the referee department can escape.
A friend/assignor has had a site which she and another assignor created quite a while ago. The got bought by Demosphere but have been active with Demosphere. They had a meeting scheduled with USSF about progress on a site that USSF had spec'd out. The meeting was short. Despite their being close to finished, USSF announced that they were going another direction and all of the work they had done (and been paid for) was in the thrash.
I've already been talking to some local refs and we are all quite frustrated. Even just for local youth leagues, I already have leagues that are or will be on Assignr, Arbiter, SportLynx, one that's been on an even more archaic looking website than GO, and an assignor who made his own crappy app, a coed adult league that will go to a Google Doc, so I'm already on 6 different platforms. Most of us are gonna be on 4-6 or more. Meanwhile, basically all other sports are all done just through Arbiter. There's no variety. One site for everything. It's really funny how it's ALWAYS soccer refs getting shafted on EVERYTHING. Soccer refereeing is going to the birds with the worst treatment of refs in any sport. Dissent and assaults, terrible pay to time and physical exertion ratio, financial burdens of gear and certain high level major tournaments not paying refs travel stipends, and now even assigning.
Guess I should consider myself licky. I'm only on one platform (Assignr) year round with High School being on another for 3 months of the year.
A single, "must use" platform? You mean like uniforms? Be careful what you wish for, because you may get it.
See that’s exactly the problem. Competition is supposed to be good for us so refs don’t get stuck in the OSI/capelli uniform scam with assigning platform monopoly. But this isn’t the case, it’s made it even worse We have league assignors here, would not be surprised after the new year to see some of you guys coming here talking about further reduced membership and this platform issue being a reason for some people
I’ve been assigning for 10 years and no one has ever said “I’m quitting because of the assigning platform.” I have never had anyone tell me they are quitting over uniforms. There are plenty of reasons referees disappear over time. These wouldn’t make a top 10. For the record, I assign in Assigr, Arbiter, excel and up until a month ago GO. Its whatever the league or group uses.
We will see what happens. It’s not about the specific platform used. It’s about some, probably a lot of, referees now likely having to balance 4+ platforms just to do some local games. Maybe the younger people will be fine with it, but especially for older guys who make up a lot of the ref pool and aren’t as technologically inclined, I would not be surprised to see some leave due to it