RefBlog

Add another reason I don't like high school

Gads - I don't even have to be reffing high school to find another thing that bugs me. Recently, the sectional playoffs for high school soccer ended, and teams have won the right to play in the actual high school tournament. I've reffed it a few times, as I've mentioned in the past, and it's fun and interesting, and exposes some more hypocrisy of (at least this state's) high school sports governing body.

This year's thing isn't huge, and really isn't an injustice, but merely shows how vastly unappreciated the referees are in high school sports. So, the high school association holds a big to-do for the athletes and parents/guardians who make the tournament - cool, nothing wrong with that. But the scope is... out of proportion. They rent an arena used for mid-sized to major concerts (5800 seats, according to the website) for the banquet for maybe a few hundred people. Did I mention the upper deck wasn't used? Umm, hello? I understand you wanting a place that's big enough to have the event - but I know that there are plenty of places big enough (anyone looking for wedding reception sites could tell you that), let alone one that is going to be monstrously more expensive than any of the alternatives. Plus it's a catered event. I don't know for certain, but I'm pretty sure this is indirectly paid for via taxpayers.

Now as for the gripe of referee treatment - nobody expects refs to get the same treatment, although for many of us this is just as big a deal as if we were a player (I mean, there are damn few players who play high school sports that get this far - maybe they do it as a ref?), and rightly treat it as the pinnacle of their career. Ok, so no catered event in a gigantic area - but we don't even get freakin' Subway sandwiches at our ref meeting.

The USSF referee committee, at least in this state, does better for their refs - even on a smaller, non-taxpayer funded budget. Feh.

02 February '10 - 17:22 - - default| No comments yet - § ¶

Differences between sports

No, the blog's not dead - it's just winter. I decided against doing a "Best Of" this year for reasons of time and number of entries for 2009.

---

I've mentioned it a few times, but for the most part of left this item of my reffing life out of this blog, but I'm officiating roller derby now. The quick-and-dirty story is that another referee friend of mine got me out to watch a bout, and despite my preconceptions, I enjoyed watching it immensely. Three years later, with the realization that getting my State badge would take a lot longer than I planned, I took my first step into becoming a multi-sport official. Fortunately, soccer is a 3-4 month summer endeavor in this state, so there's plenty of time to indulge in other activities, especially since I stopped doing indoor soccer (short-sided and wall-ball) several years ago.

Now, I can't speak for how other sports work, but I thought it might be interesting to compare my experiences with derby with my experiences in soccer. There's a lot of (especially in foul recognition), but some major differences in philosophy.

First, some background (if you want something more in-depth, there's a pretty decent article in Wikipedia): while the roller derby most of us grew up with was a pre-determined entertainment, that became more and more like professional wrestling, the current iteration, is pure sport; there are fishnets and fake names (although a lot of that is for security purposes - it seems each league has their own list of icky people to keep an eye out for), but the action on the track is real. In 2004 the Women's Flat Track Derby Association was formed, and put out a standardized set of rules, which has been evolving in great leaps and bounds (we're currently on the fourth major rules update). There are currently 455 active roller derby leagues worldwide, according to Derby Roster, which keeps track of them. Some of these are just single teams, playing travel; some have "A" and "B" teams; some have a collection of "home teams" playing a local league; and some have a mix of all three. The vast majority of leagues are owned and operated by the skaters (making a huge departure from the old leagues, where were owned and operated by a promoter) - many have league rules that incorporate public service as a requirement for playing, and most donate any revenues they make that exceed their operational expenses (which may not be much, but hey).

Officially speaking, roller derby is much more complicated than soccer. While in soccer you have (ideally) three referees and a fourth official for administrative purposes; roller derby can have four to seven skating officials, and a bevy of non-skating officials, manning the penalty box, tracking penalties and scorekeeping.

Philosophy is where things differ a lot. First because derby, and I'm referring to the current real sport iteration, is so new, there's no old boys network that I'm aware of. I remember a few years back when there were people marveling on SocRef that the center referee in the NCAA College Cup had facial hair. Now, can you picture this guy reffing a high-level soccer match (pic: http://newyork.metromix.com/content_image/full/638866/560/370)? He's probably one of of the most respected referees in the WFTDA. The tats and the hair aren't a big deal in derby (I'm probably one of the stranger ones for not having a tattoo) - and he takes his job as seriously as any USSF referee holding a National or FIFA badge. In fact, when I was at a conference where he did a lot of the instructing was no different than any other advanced re-certification class I took with the USSF. Likewise, the pre-game meetings are no different than any quality, Gil Weber-style pre-game. In other words, it's just as serious, even if it's look would drive some people crazy at Referee Magazine.

The biggest difference in how things are officiated is soccer's emphasis on man-management, which derby sees as coaching. Part of that is the difference in the games, of course. Soccer runs more-or-less freely for 45 minutes each half - the referee only stopping things when necessary (be it justice, injury, or goal scored). In derby each half is broken down into much smaller parts, called jams, which are no longer than two minutes each. There's also a desire in the WFTDA that every official calls the game the same way, nation- (and now world) wide; we know very well that in soccer the style of the referee has a major impact in how the game is run. In soccer, if a referee can get a player to not commit a foul, that's considered a good thing because the flow of the game can continue unimpeded; in derby that's thought of giving one team an unfair advantage; likewise, what's derided as "gotcha" officiating in soccer is standard practice in roller derby.

I don't know if this qualifies as philosophy, but as soccer referees we know that most of the players and coaches have never read the rules. And as coaches get higher and better licenses (from the entry level, to the "A" license which lets you coach professional teams), there's still no requirement to read or know the Laws of the Game. You have to give WFTDA credit: in order to play in their leagues, players have to pass a written rules test, along with the physical and skill requirements. Does any other league in any other sport do that?

I recently had a conversation with our league's assistant head referee, and apparently there's some discussion about a book by a NBA referee about how they try to massage a game to keep star players in. We know this happens in the MLS as well - it's also been a major impediment when MLS players play in international competitions, as they're not used to the game being called straight-up anymore, and they can't get away with what they can in this country. Roller derby has always had sex appeal driving ticket sales; I can't recall the name, but a big player in the 50s-70s referred to her chest as "tickets"; and while travel teams are looking more and more professional, fishnets, makeup, and (when they're honest) T&A are still part of what drives in people to watch - but the officiating is never modified to make things more entertaining. As I said, the philosophies vary greatly.

16 January '10 - 16:32 - - default| No comments yet - § ¶

Winning team's burden

As mentioned before, I'm skipping the high school season; in this case because I've got other regularly occuring activies that happen the same days as high school games - and frankly sometimes I just need a year away (see many many rants about high school soccer). But I am working games at the same sport-centered school I've been fortunate enough to work for the last two winters. As a quick recap, they've got players on the youth national teams, and always work you physically, even if it's not a close game.

One of the interesting things I've noticed, and as a realization that I'm getting old, is that I'm recognzing players on the U18 boys teams from when they played on U13. At U13 you could see this one player's potential, but also see a big temper issue - given that he's also a good six inches taller than the next tallest player, it makes him easy to remember.

It also makes it easy to remember how frustrated a losing team can become, if they're getting blown-out - even moreso if they've traveled five hours to do it. Tack on more when the game is expected the be close; when you're the top youth team on your club and you play in the USL's Super-Y League. But it wasn't close, and early on you could see that it wasn't going to be close. And although the game was very clean for 85 minutes, when you're down 7-0 it won't take much to set people off.

In this case, I think I was on top of things, even though I issued three yellow cards in the final five minutes. As I said earlier, the game was very clearly a blowout, and but not terribly physical for a U18 boys game. There was one guy on the visiting side that talked trash in the first few minutes that I had some words with (once the first goal was scored he shut up), but after that things were pretty smooth. Then with about five minute left came the first cynical foul; two players banged into each other and fell down, and instead of just getting up, the visiting player jutted out his foot further to purposefully trip up his opponent. Now, yellow cards don't mean much on these games - there's no league or yellow card points to enforce sanctions, but since the teams are almost always pretty disciplined it's unlike like the "Wild West Days" that were the adult co-ed indoor leagues that I wrote about for the first few years on this blog; meaning they're usually taken with the proper intent, and usually play like it could mean something later (and that, and pay attention because it's me saying this, is probably because of good and respectful coaching). And truth be told, that player didn't do anything else, but a teammate did another cynical foul, and even though my whistle was blazing and my yellow card was already out, the home player retailiated.

When it comes to retialiation, I have a pretty simple guideline I follow (assuming the retialitaion isn't worse than the origional action): if it comes before I blow the whistle, I might give them some slack - I leave the option open for me. If, however, I've already blown my, "There will be plastic" whistle and there's retialiation, I don't forgive. Added in this scenario that I was also charging in and was only a few feet away, with yellow card already drawn, when the player decided to shove (hard) the guy who fouled him, I knew I was going to book both players. I briefly considered red for the retialiator, but pretty quickly dismissed it as I checked my back pocket (which is why it's there, to give you that second to think while you fiddle with the pocket flap).

People like to talk about the referee losing control of the game, and while I think that can be true, I also think it's an incredibly over-used assessment and incorrect at least every nine our of ten occurences. As referees, we have two primary tools and two secondary tools at our disposal: The primary are the whistle and the cards; the secondard are our ability to talk to players (but only if they're willing to listen), and the ability to slow a game down at free kicks. About the only time the later can be used is after a booking, as you really don't want to take away a legitimate quick-kick scenario. Sometimes, the players have to see that you will use the book, and use it to protect both teams, which is what I hope came across when I booked both players in that second action.

But ultiamtely, it's the winning team, not the referee, that has to deal with frustration fouls; it's the winning team's burden. More and more, especially in the older youth and in adult games, when things have become clear that you can't win by skill, the tactic changes to winning by prodding the other people into getting themselves ejected. Now, I don't think that's what happened in this case (I just think they were frustration fouls, without going into the very cynical territory that I see in adult games) - but they have to deal with it the same way.

Teams that are blowing their opponents away need to understand that they may be feeding that frustation by their own perfectly legal actions. The second game, where I was AR2, was even a bigger blowout than the first. Same two teams, but different ages (U17 boys instead of U18). But where the first game finished 7-0, the halftime score of the second was 8-0; and every goal, up to their 15th was met by players running toward the goal-scored, celebrating, hugging, and generally making a big deal out of things. Now, scoring a goal is a big deal, especially if you don't score many - I can count on one hand the number of goals I've scored as a player, but when it was at the expense of a blowout, I knew enough to keep outwardly mellow and I jogged back into position. Again, I have to applaud the (warning: this may cause long time readers to be short of breath, because I'm about to compliment a coach again) visiting coach in keeping his team so well disciplined - I know I wouldn't have, hell - I know I haven't, been that calm in their situation.

01 November '09 - 10:33 - - default| No comments yet - § ¶

I'm glad I'm not the only one who smiles

What a bummer: all set to be a national; assessments in-hand and doing the physical (which are not located anywhere near this state) you yank a hamstring. That, ladies and gentlemen, is a pretty good definition of sucks. But he's a great referee, who on more than one occasion has helped me out (including one big ass saving), both on the field and off; I hope he'll get another chance next year.

I've mentioned earlier this year that I think I've found a pattern is most of our men's league games: when one team realizes that they cannot win by skill, they resort to both intimidation and whining. Elbows will be thrown, shoulders will be lowered and momentum will not be halted; combined with that really nasty cocktail is whining about every little touch they get in return. Any one of those is bad enough, both is an inditement upon their honor. That it's happens with regularlity is a sad reflection of how we treat sports in this country.

The game was handled extremely well, as you would expect on a division three men's game by a National Candidate. I did stop by and tell him after the game, that, referring to a spot when a player is complaining about a ball out-of-play that didn't go his direction (a blindingly obvious call that the player was trying to scam), that I'm glad I'm not the only one who starts smiling when they try to pull that stuff. (more)

29 October '09 - 00:01 - - default| two comments, already - § ¶

Knee? Not too bad

If the 3rd division women's game was the warm up, the 2nd division men's was the test. And while there were no flying colors, the knee held up pretty well. I could definitely tell I had some issues, being I'm at beginning of season form, and the teams are in the final third - but there were no cock-ups, and I held up pretty-well with play. I had one moment late in the first half when I felt it really go ping - but I didn't come up lame and it quickly went away. Furthermore, there's been no next day side-effects. I'm not sure I'm ready yet for lines on 1st division men's games yet (which I did a lot of these last few years), but I'm happy to be doing games again. The next test will be a center.

The game was pretty good - pretty clean, pretty mellow, two beautiful goals scored, and one ugly game winner. The first goal was off a free kick, to the inside of the wall and just into the net. The second, to tie it up, was an off-balance, tight-angle shot from seven or eight yards away that squeaked past the keeper into the far side's side-netting. But less than five minutes later, the other goalkeeper let a low ball through his hands; that one ended up being the game-winner.

Overall, I'm pretty happy with how I did - I know I can do better, but all things considered I'm pretty satisfied. Too bad the season is almost over - although there will be some fall games in a women's league I'll be able to referee (I've decided to forgo High School this year, as I'm learning to referee another sport, which has practices on the same day as most high school matches, and because it has its own hand signals I'm working on learning - and trying to work with both sets at the same time will just be a pain)..

07 October '09 - 08:51 - - default| No comments yet - § ¶