SoCal league ref training and qualification

[TrailBraking]

Just finished one game today and the ref is very badly trained.

1. Game started late by 10min because he was late arriving the field. He seems to just be here to collect money not working hard to officiating at all from his body language.
2. He does not understand build out line. There is no offside when player starts behind the build out line while he is not aware of that and needs the coach to explain the rule to him.
3. Multiple very clear calls are missed. Or when not missed, the whistle can be very late.
4. Multiple players mentioned he was very rude to players too especially when players fall down and he was only able to speak very limited English such as “get up”.

It is hard to be a ref and ref can make mistakes which is totally fine. But in this occasion, really makes people wonder if there is some bar to be the ref for SoCal league.

 

[Grace T.]

Just finished one game today and the ref is very badly trained.

1. Game started late by 10min because he was late arriving the field. He seems to just be here to collect money not working hard to officiating at all from his body language.
2. He does not understand build out line. There is no offside when player starts behind the build out line while he is not aware of that and needs the coach to explain the rule to him.
3. Multiple very clear calls are missed. Or when not missed, the whistle can be very late.
4. Multiple players mentioned he was very rude to players too especially when players fall down and he was only able to speak very limited English such as “get up”.

It is hard to be a ref and ref can make mistakes which is totally fine. But in this occasion, really makes people wonder if there is some bar to be the ref for SoCal league.

The league doesn’t do the assignments. It’s the local referee association.

U10 without ars? Not an inexperienced ref. Those slots are reserved and coveted for more senior refs because more $ and less running unless it was a last minute substitution. His being late points to that.

Whistle being late is to be expected…whistles are supposed to be late so the ref can see whether to call advantage so that seems to indicate the ref did at least that part right. I personally advocate that at u10 refs should be quicker on the whistle but I’ve been told numerous times by more experienced refs including refs need love that it’s wrong to do that. Flow of the game yada yada yada.

U10 is the hardest age to make calls esp if it’s a lower level game. Kids are constantly tripping over their own legs and just going down like feathers.

 

[Socal-Soccer-Dad]

Just finished one game today and the ref is very badly trained.

1. Game started late by 10min because he was late arriving the field. He seems to just be here to collect money not working hard to officiating at all from his body language.
2. He does not understand build out line. There is no offside when player starts behind the build out line while he is not aware of that and needs the coach to explain the rule to him.
3. Multiple very clear calls are missed. Or when not missed, the whistle can be very late.
4. Multiple players mentioned he was very rude to players too especially when players fall down and he was only able to speak very limited English such as “get up”.

It is hard to be a ref and ref can make mistakes which is totally fine. But in this occasion, really makes people wonder if there is some bar to be the ref for SoCal league.

Ref'ing is hard. I thought about doing it now that my kids are a bit older and I kind of miss the youngers games.

I was going to treat the extra few hundred from ref'ing a few games a month as my splurge on whatever hobby money...

But I think I don't know if I'm ready to be yelled at all weekend...

I do think there needs to be a way to rate the refs.. back to the assignor or the association.. and a way of requesting certain refs...
I'm not sure if they already do that or not..

But good refs should be in demand.. and should be compensated more... and thus creating an incentive to take the job with pride and do a quality job... and not all get paid the same... I've encountered some excellent refs who took time to communicate to both teams sidelines and instructive to the kids and controlled the game without making it feel like it was about them... but some like you said just show up and take the cash and leave... we should have a way of differentiating between the two groups...

 

[Grace T.]

Ref'ing is hard. I thought about doing it now that my kids are a bit older and I kind of miss the youngers games.

I was going to treat the extra few hundred from ref'ing a few games a month as my splurge on whatever hobby money...

But I think I don't know if I'm ready to be yelled at all weekend...

I do think there needs to be a way to rate the refs.. back to the assignor or the association.. and a way of requesting certain refs...
I'm not sure if they already do that or not..

But good refs should be in demand.. and should be compensated more... and thus creating an incentive to take the job with pride and do a quality job... and not all get paid the same... I've encountered some excellent refs who took time to communicate to both teams sidelines and instructive to the kids and controlled the game without making it feel like it was about them... but some like you said just show up and take the cash and leave... we should have a way of differentiating between the two groups...

Home team usually contracts with the ref association if the league doesn’t facilitate it. If you allow home teams to request refs they’ll just request refs that are friendly for favorable rulings and pay them under the table. I’m pretty sure years ago I caught the doc of my kids then club actually doing this for another team but I wasn’t sure and had no proof.

 

[RedDevil24]

Grace is correct that the association assigns the game not the home team. Not to say what Grace has experienced with under the table stuff may not have happened. But the home does not have a say. For SoCal the Games are geographically assigned by association. I can only speak for OC, and I might be mistaken on the exact dividing line for SOCAL League, but I believe everything (and including) Great Park and north belongs to one association, and everything south of Great Park belongs to another for league assignments.

The alphabet leagues have a whole different standard. They get to CHOOSE which association they want to work with, That is, which association the home team wants to have their games assigned with. The Great Park, again, happens to be the spot with the most fluidity. For GA for example, West Coast and So Cal Reds both use the Great Park for their home games. But West Coast contracts with one association, The Reds with another. Same thing with ECNL clubs. I’m sure cost plays a role in this, though I believe all the associations run fairly similar fee schedules. Ultimately I think teams will to work with the associations that give them the most quality referees.

Grace might be right in that you might get the older, “less mobile” referees to work the 7v7 and 9V9 games along with the newbies. But it’s not by choice or simply because they want the higher pay rate. All the leagues across the board, Including Socal, bumped up their referee fees a fair amount this year. But the alphabet leagues did to even a greater percentage with the stipulation that the associations send them the best ,most qualified and most highly rated referees to the alphabet games. So you are not (or should very rarely) get an ECNL game for ex that’s going to have a referee that can’t do much more than walk at a brisk pace and not leave the center circle. And the referee associations don’t want to lose these games because they tend to be much “better” to do for the referee (better soccer, and usually less reactive parents/coaches)

Regarding the original post:

SOCAL has introduced “Fair whistle” this season for their games. This is only for league games U-10 and under as well as all N1 games. This is a rating feedback system that is done by the referee as well as the coaches. The referee rates the coaches, the parents and the field conditions, and the coaches reate the referee. Whether or not that will have a positive impact is yet to be seen, I am not super optimistic….

As Grace said, despite the pay, U10 and under games are usually the worst to have. Even though they pay very well relatively speaking. As Grace said the kids are usually still fairly uncoordinated, the parents usually have a no significant knowledge of the game, are overprotective , and are over rambunctious with every little thing. On top of that, as stated above, its usually a one man crew because there are just not enough referees to cover 7V7 games with a three man crew. And in my experience, probably six out of every 10 7v7 or 9v9 fields have some sort of field condition issue. Namely poorly painted lines which make things like the ball going out of bounds difficult to see when things quickly change from one to another field to the other and even fittest referee doesn’t have time to cover that much ground.



And its also worth noting That the referee associations are also trying their best to internally rate their own referees by observation. However, again, there are just so many games to cover and not enough bodies that it has been difficult to establish this consistently.

 

[sigmabody]

Just to note (was discussed before fairly extensively), one of the things SoCal League did explicitly over the last 1-2 years was to take an entirely one-sided stance with respect to referee performance (this is before Fair Whistle, which I think was mainly added in response to the blow-back from their stance, but seems to have zero actual efficacy in practice). Specifically, they took the stance that no complaints about referee performance on or off the field would even be listened to, much less acted upon, and bad referees were free to abuse their authority, the kids, be terrible at their job, etc., and there would be no repercussions.

It was noted by several people at the time, myself included, that this would just make many of the existing problems worse. SoCal League did it anyway, citing shortages of officials. Now they have also massively bumped up the pay as well, which (combined with the no accountability stance) will encourage more bad/lazy people to officiate games poorly and/or abusively. These are all predictable and direct consequences of the league's actions.

To some extent the letter leagues can get better officials, but only to some extent (we literally had an AR in our last EA2 match who seemingly didn't know the offside rules, and couldn't be bothered to even try to move along the line beyond a medium walking pace). There's no referee feedback mechanism for those leagues either, so garbage officials thrive there too. No league seems even remotely inclined to improve the situation, based on what I've seen.

 

[sigmabody]

Also, just to note: the decision to not demand better quality officiating is probably intentional, at least by the letter leagues (for whatever reason). They literally require recording the games, and could easily rate the officials after the fact, and/or spot check reports of bad officiating, if this was a priority at all. They do not, nor do they even listen to such reports, so the only logical conclusion is that they also do not care about bad officials or bad officiating of their matches.

 

[Grace T.]

Also, just to note: the decision to not demand better quality officiating is probably intentional, at least by the letter leagues (for whatever reason). They literally require recording the games, and could easily rate the officials after the fact, and/or spot check reports of bad officiating, if this was a priority at all. They do not, nor do they even listen to such reports, so the only logical conclusion is that they also do not care about bad officials or bad officiating of their matches.

You’d have to pay someone to watch the games, edit the clips and litigate it first with the league and then the ref association. No one is paying them. A more correct statement is they do not care enough to establish an entire system that does this for hours for free. A daddy ball volunteer system has an advantage over a p2p system that way (daddy cares about his trophy) but the problem there is knowledge and reputation. It’s why travel clubs wouldn’t base such a system on parent volunteers…they’d be embarrassed/make enemies by an overly zealous or not knowledgeable daddy that trashes the clubs reputation

Just to note (was discussed before fairly extensively), one of the things SoCal League did explicitly over the last 1-2 years was to take an entirely one-sided stance with respect to referee performance (this is before Fair Whistle, which I think was mainly added in response to the blow-back from their stance, but seems to have zero actual efficacy in practice). Specifically, they took the stance that no complaints about referee performance on or off the field would even be listened to, much less acted upon, and bad referees were free to abuse their authority, the kids, be terrible at their job, etc., and there would be no repercussions.

It was noted by several people at the time, myself included, that this would just make many of the existing problems worse. SoCal League did it anyway, citing shortages of officials. Now they have also massively bumped up the pay as well, which (combined with the no accountability stance) will encourage more bad/lazy people to officiate games poorly and/or abusively. These are all predictable and direct consequences of the league's actions.

To some extent the letter leagues can get better officials, but only to some extent (we literally had an AR in our last EA2 match who seemingly didn't know the offside rules, and couldn't be bothered to even try to move along the line beyond a medium walking pace). There's no referee feedback mechanism for those leagues either, so garbage officials thrive there too. No league seems even remotely inclined to improve the situation, based on what I've seen.

The ars are the most basic basic level refs or refs that are being punished/trained. Anyone with a little experience is being shoved to the center for u12/u14 games and taking it because the pay is better. My kid is reffing ea and ea2 games as an ar. They saw he was half way competent and quickly shoved him up from SoCal olders. It’s a lot of running for back to back games. His legs are usually wrecked and he’s still a teen. Don’t know how anyone over 30 who isn’t training does more than 2 unless they walk it and taking just 2 usually doesn’t make the drive worth it (McDonald’s still pays better with benefits)