I don't think it's fair to tar everyone doing high school games like that. Yes, you had a partner who shouldn't be doing these games and someone you don't want to work with anymore. But "no generalization is worth a damn, including this one." If you're going to connect the dots, you have to have more than one dot.
I think it’s quite clear that metros rants are directed at referees who are exclusively doing high school, he is not “tarring everyone who does high school”. And as I said before, I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the demographic of people who are usually officiating high school sports matches that start on weekday afternoons, and especially EXCLUSIVELY refereeing only these matches, are extremely stubborn, hardheaded, and unwilling to listen to people correcting them or telling them that they are wrong, and unwilling to change. These people usually act this way in their real lives, so it’s no surprise that it carries over to their officiating
As I stated previously, everyone's experience is different. Yours apparently is more positive on this topic. Why should I doubt that folks here are having these unfriendly encounters with fans in the "Bad Stories" thread during and after HS games when I'm not? Just because I'm not having those issues, it does not mean the regular posters are horrible officials or exaggerating this or making up their experiences. I can only speak for my area like they are for theirs and appreciate reading about people's experiences outside of my state. Almost 1.5 years (which is about 100 games) is more than a sufficient sample size for me to express that HS referees (mostly non-USSF guys) hold onto myths for many years and are inflexible to the way they do things compared to my many years of officiating USSF sanctioned matches. I've never had a HS partner comment, "I think I got that foul call wrong....how did you see it?" It just doesn't happen.
It's definitely totally dependent on where you are. For example, in my chapter, about 80% of the folks are USSF referees as well. However, at 31, I am the fourth youngest in the chapter. Our average age if 65. So, totally different demographic than what Law5 was describing I believe with majority of his officials being younger. In a neighboring chapter, there is a lot of folks who only do HS and not USSF. So in the same state, the county next to us has a different make up. We have people coming from this other county in order to work games for us because they like our environment better. So, the moral of this is definitely YMMV.
I clearly screwed up a passive offside call the other day and the home team Coach at the half blasted me and I apologized to him and told him that I made a mistake. My referee partner then tells me, never admit to a Coach when you are wrong...smh
It’s difficult to work a dual system with differing personalities. I can do a wonderful pre-game for a USSF sanctioned match so that my AR’s are on the same page as me so that we’re consistent with the way the match is called so that they’re not waving for a “soft” foul late in the game. In high school pre-games, egos get in the way since everyone has a whistle. Late in the game in my match yesterday, the trail referee is yelling 60 yards away at the goalkeeper “Let’s go…6 second rule!”. If that’s not undermining, then I don’t know what is. We were wearing comms and I told him that we were allowing the same 10 seconds that we were in the first half, and the winning team is under no obligation to hurry their punt. I can say he was not happy with that response.
So metro are you now just making a game out of antagonizing these archaic, stubborn, unwilling to be corrected, egotistical high school refs in each match? I think it’s funny if you do. But if I was in your shoes, I would just stop trying to change them and stop getting upset when they pull their crap, and talk to them as little as possible. If they undermine you, just let it go. Report it to the assignor if you want. But this is clearly going to be a thing in almost every HS game you’re doing. Why subject yourself to that stress. Just let it go
ok well let's step back on this a bit: if the trail referee is standing in front of the losing team bench and he is getting an earful from their Coach, I would have absolutely no problem with addressing the possible issue of time-wasting even if you are the lead official. It's all about getting out of there in one piece, with minimal conflict and you are a team.
He was on the fan-side in the second half, not the coaches side. There was no time-wasting. They were taking the same time putting the ball in play that they took when the match was tied in the first half.
31 is the fourth youngest? I did a varsity girls game this year with a high school senior as AR2. I think he was younger than some of the players. And he did a very professional job. I'd be happy to work with him again. That leaves me with two points. 1. being cranky with partners et al. is not necessarily related to age, allowing that younger officials may still be too new to assert themselves, correctly or incorrectly, but experience trumps age. 2. the profile of the referee association membership varies around the country and any statement that 'all referees are....' is probably right in some places and wrong in others.
Generally, if I'm in your shoes in that situation, without screaming out loud for all to hear, but for those involved, just the 'let's move it keeper' on each occassion. Doesn't give a countdown, doesn't say what you will do, but its enough for them to move and for some on the other team to hear that you/us are aware that the one team may be time wasting. And then, if you need to sanction later, you have the backup that they had been warned.
To all you guys, this isn’t soccer but fits the sport wide NFHS ref attitude problem we are discussing. Earlier this year, I recruited a dad in his late 40s of a U12 player to become a ref for water polo. He was running the time clock for a youth club game we were doing (think equivalent of USSF youth games). He has been taking refereeing very seriously wanting to do very well, learn, study, etc. He has done a lot of youth club games and is enjoying it I just received this text from him this morning
There was no time wasting. Both referees established a bar for both goalies that would be acceptable at any of the levels we all officiate in. You don't lower the bar because one team is losing.
It’s funny you say this because it’s actually the complete opposite. DSC soccer refereeing is the most egotistical refereeing method of any sport. Most other sports have used referees with multiple whistles for decades and have decided that it’s the best thing, even when referees have competing personalities or even different rule interpretations, and accept that there are certain areas of the field that will be no man's land with calls, and say that all referees in the game are equal in responsibility. It’s soccer DSC that has decided that only one ref is "good enough" to be the one with the final say on fouls and the others are just there to “assist” him. The fact that we consider every referee being equal in responsibility with a whistle to mean that they get a "big ego" from carrying one is a pretty sad state of affairs.
Yes. Couple points for that. Pennsylvania does not allow kids that have not graduated and are under 18 (both crucial points) to officiate HS games. They recently made a new program called "junior official" where they allow 16 and 17 year olds to referee middle school games. So that's one thing. Two, many of our games start at 4pm. In fact, at least half of our varsity games are played at 4. That means majority of the population cannot get out of work for them, so they do not bother working high school. That has changed a bit with more people having remote work, flexible working hours etc., but it is still a lot of us who are teachers, then some self employed and a whole lot of retirees or people close to it. Third, I have talked to younger people who said they would never do HS because they have the system - the two man and the three whistle system. We do all of our HS games here in our chapter as a two man, including all varsity games. Then when we move to play-offs, we do three whistle, officially knows as the "double dual". People are turned off by that and do not want to work it. That's my 7th grade 5 paragraph essay's body about why younger people do not want to referee high school.
It's been well documented here about the trials at the higher levels that a dual-system doesn't work. It's difficult to compare soccer to other sports for so many reasons. At the high-school level, it's possible to have a successful match, if you have two guys who see the game the same way. On Saturday morning, my match was with an attorney who was a former state referee. If there's anybody who should have an ego, it would be him. Instead, it was probably the best officiated dual-system match I've been a part of this year, when you consider the talent on the field. The coaches weren't frustrated that two guys had different bars for a foul. We had similar man management approaches and we had fans from both teams being complimentary. As I mentioned before, I had that guy two days ago shouting "Goalie, 6 seconds" from 60 yards away even though we established long ago that we're ok with the 10 seconds since the opening save and has a long history of inserting his ego in a negative light. The coaches and fans are not stupid and see the disconnect from a mile away. It's the only match this year not a single soul had anything positive to say after the game.
Yea...I did a bunch of U-18 matches with an attorney who was an Assistant DA. From the 1st match it was like we were one. That we both had Italian roots made it easy recognizing hand signals!
My state has same rules, yet very VERY few HS-age refs (from our USSF pool) want to even consider doing MS games, even though they do U14/15 rec/club... "Those games actually count, and people yell so much." Around here, 4pm would mean ONLY the retirees could work them. But, most often gridiron football practice supersedes anything soccer-related, and away team's busses are limited, so 5:30-6:30 is typical first/only kickoff. Around here, it's usually just, "No way I'm going to be yelled at by the coaches and all those parents like you guys are."
We usually have one or two high school students refereeing high school games in our area. One did so well this year that the assignor wanted to have him do playoff games, but you have to have three years of high school experience to do the playoffs. (I'm going to use him as a press box 'spotter' for the state championships.) I did a men's league game earlier this year with a high school student AR who said he was also going to be doing high school games. "It was a choice between refereeing and being the third string goalkeeper for my high school team." My older daughter made the same choice when she was a high school senior. She was offered a playoff game that year but she declined it because she had a calculus B/C exam the next day.
We are onto the playoffs over here. The stats came out the other day for our chapter. For the whole region with 70+ varsity teams, a total of 11 red cards were given. I gave 45% of them. Effin' strange season.
Yesterday, I did a USSF sanctioned match with a colleague who told me about his high school varsity match on Friday. His partner waived off a goal for "dangerous play" for sliding inside the 6 yard area and redirecting the ball even though the nearest defender was 2 yards away (not even sure that's relevant). Since the whistle didn't occur until after the goal, my colleague tried to talk him out of it before the restart and wouldn't budge even though the coaches were going nuts. I had a similar situation last year in the playoffs where the potential winning goal was waved-off by my partner on a breakaway because the goalscorer had a "high foot" (no way!) in which he chipped the ball over the goalkeeper. I had no opportunity to talk him out of it since the whistle occurred when the ball was still 5 yards away from the goal line. The fans went nuts and the team went on to lose in OT with the referee getting insults from the losing team fans on the way out. I don't believe the answer is entirely "Well, these guys don't do USSF matches and they are multi-sport officials and don't watch the pro game" because they're still getting assigned varsity matches. For those of you who have been officiating high school sports for 15 years or more, is it possible this was the "expected call" back then where the emphasis was for safety reasons and these guys never got the memo that the game has modernized and are still officiating matches as if it's the prehistoric era? Again, it's not a handful of guys who whistle these "dangerous plays" and am wondering if it was an NFHS thing with an emphasis on these types of plays LONG ago or perhaps an emphasis that may have existed one time long ago with my chapter.
You talkin' to me??? I've been refereeing high school for more than 15 times 2 years. I don't think that what you are seeing is old teaching. I think it is disagreement about what constitutes dangerous play. The nearest opponent being two yards away is relevant because it suggests that there was no danger to the opponent. Dangerous play requires that it is likely to cause injury to any player. I.e. that includes injury to the player doing it. So maybe your colleague felt that a slide that far was 'likely' to cause injury to the player doing the sliding. I will note that around here the O-40 and older divisions, as well as adult co-ed games of any age, all ban slide tackling and want it called as dangerous play. But I wasn't at the game you describe. In your second example, I don't know how close the goalkeeper was or how high the attacker's foot was. Therefore, I really can't comment. I will report, however, that, a while back, we had a late season rivalry game in which the goalkeeper and forward were coming together for a high bouncing ball. The forward's foot went into the goalkeeper's face, full force. The game was terminated, the forward red carded, and the goalkeeper lost two teeth and spent four hours in surgery that day. Students from his school were posting threats on social media to mess up the forward the same way he had messed up their schoolmate. This led to a meeting between the principals, the AD's, the coaches and the officials' representatives. (the assignor and myself) After the meeting was scheduled but before it was held, the referee changed his mind and decided that he should have given the forward a caution instead of an ejection. The attendees at the meeting agreed unanimously to simply ignore his attempt to change what he had done at the field and not share that information. The forward by then had already served his one game suspension. For me, I don't see much dangerous play, particularly at the larger schools level. The skill level of most high school players has risen dramatically in the last 30+ years. As a result, I rarely see non-contact behavior of the 'just stick out my foot and hope something good happens' style.