State Referee Committee Response to Referee Shortages in Fall Season We are excited to welcome our fall league season. The pandemic affected our soccer community greatly, we want to acknowledge and send our deepest sympathy to those in our community who lost a loved one. As soccer continues to recover from the shutdowns, we want to thank all the club/league administrators, coaches, parents, referees, and players for their commitment to local soccer.
Our State Referee Committee services equally all matches, tournaments, and leagues affiliated with U.S. Soccer in Southern California. We have worked countless hours to recruit, register, train, and mentor referees to provide service for all leagues and tournaments. During the beginning of the shutdowns, we predicted a referee shortage due to many factors pertaining to the pandemic. We communicated to our soccer community with advance notice of these foreseen shortages by email, phone, and social media platforms.
Our current referee registration numbers and participation in our new referee courses are very low compared to past years. We need 6,000 referees to cover all matches in a normal fall season and we have only 60% currently registered. Taking in account referee availability, injuries caused by match overload, increasing sideline referee abuse, other gaming leagues, and COVID concerns, we are in a referee shortage downward spiral.
As the shutdown restrictions were lifted, our SRC and Cal South State Cup Organizers formulated a referee shortage plan of action, and not one Cal South National/State Cup game was short of referees. We recently provided a similar plan for Coast Soccer League and SoCal/Discovery League to ensure all referees/assignors are properly licensed, trained, and risk-managed.
U.S. Soccer Policy 531-8 Section 2-3 refers to using unregistered referees/club linesmen in unforeseen emergency situations; however, this action is not recommended by the SRC or should not be the normal procedure due to the high risk of liability the clubs and leagues potentially could face if a problem occurs. Player safety is our utmost priority and if no registered referee is present, rescheduling is the recommended option.
Coast Soccer League referee coverage has been the model league thus far. CSL staff provide timely schedules for our referee assignors, few game changes, better referee working conditions, minimal referee abuse incidents, and a referee phone application that provides assignors/referees a better opportunity to cover league matches.
For leagues that are having trouble servicing their members with referees, it would be extremely helpful for them to change administrative procedures and provide fair working conditions for their referees and assignors to be effective.
Recently, SoCal staff and the SRC made the decision to mutually pause game distribution involvement with SoCal and Discovery League for a variety of administrative concerns and practices. SoCal game distribution will be done within league administrators. However, we will continue to oversee that referees/assignors are properly certified and to aid in coverage when shortages arise if communicated in a timely manner.
Our mission is to provide equal support to all leagues/tournaments to recruit, train and mentor referees for our local soccer community, as we recover and heal together.
The only way to get out of this shortage is
with the help of the soccer community (you).
Become a referee today! |