It’s No Easy Task to Earn Stripes as a Referee : First person: An aspiring official learns everything from how to handle unruly players to making sure he’s paid.
It is a steamy Monday night in a dimly lit meeting hall at the Phoenix Club in Anaheim. My buddy, Bill, and I are trying to keep our eyes open as another in a series of classes for first-time high school soccer referees drags on.
We have spent hours discussing communicable diseases, bloody uniforms, proper procedures for filling out game misconduct reports, and how to handle unruly coaches.
There have been discussions of field dimensions, violent conduct and serious foul play, the prep penalty stripe and whether we have enough liability insurance to cover potential lawsuits.
We also pick up some very critical tips from the veterans, such as how to get paid.
“Do not start your game without receiving a pay voucher or a check,” Tom King, president of the Orange County Chapter of the Southern California Soccer Officials Assn., tells us. “A couple of them will pay in cash. But don’t let the coach tell you, ‘Hey, I’ll give it to you after the game.’ Get it first or you’ll never get it, especially if the home team loses.”
We are advised not to take bags, jackets, chairs, water bottles or personal belongings onto the field, as we do at youth fields, because they might not be there when we get back.
“Put your car key in your pocket,” instructor Chuck Acocello tells us, “and when the game is over, sprint to the parking lot. Don’t wait around. Get in your car and drive away. If you need to meet with the other referee, do it a couple of blocks away where it is safe.”
We learn that players are to be sent off immediately for taunting an opponent with a simultaneous showing of both yellow and red cards, but the offending player may be replaced with a substitute, contrary to FIFA laws. Extending play at the end of a game because of injuries is not permitted, but timeouts are. Padded casts and braces are allowed with a written doctor’s note that we must get before kickoff.
We’ll be lucky to get lineup cards from many high school coaches, who might scribble them on scraps of notebook paper. Most schools can afford to hire only two referees, not three.
Bill and I have been referees at the youth level for years, beginning in the American Youth Soccer Organization in Huntington Beach, where our daughters, now in high school, played. We find the high school course tedious, repetitive, but still a great learning experience.
There are about three dozen students, most of them male, most middle-aged. They wear T-shirts, shorts, an occasional business shirt and slacks.
Most are youth soccer referees or they officiate other sports. Some make a living at it. Most come to the dank meeting hall after a long day in their real jobs.
No wonder only half of us have our minds on the classwork. The other half have their hearts downstairs in the Bier Stube, where they could be sipping a cold Dortmunder beer and watching the Detroit Lions upset the San Francisco 49ers on television.
A band in the adjacent ballroom strikes up “Mr. Sandman,” drowning out the words of Al Padilla, one of our veteran instructors. He implores us to adjust our style of calling games to fit “the psychology and temperament of youth players,” something he refers to as “the high school mind-set.”
“There is a tendency with youth to want to retaliate,” Padilla says, “or get even with each other during a game.”
That’s why, according to King, who also officiates basketball, we as referees should “find a reason to blow the whistle in the first two minutes” of the game.
When ejecting a player, a tactic called booking, isolate the offender and do not invite retaliation by standing within kicking or striking distance of him at the time you present a red card.
School rivalries affect the intensity level of games and it is our job to be aware of that beforehand.
“The general public can recognize and identify with a school name,” instructor Acocello says. “Schools are always getting their names in the newspapers. They don’t do that for clubs unless it’s for a national title, so when a high school game begins, it’s showtime.”
The Southern Section requires new soccer referees to have 18 hours of instruction, pass a 100-question written test with at least 85% of the answers correct and complete a physical agility test consisting of a 12-minute run, 50-yard dash and relay race. Returning referees get a break--only nine hours each year--including the physical.
Getting your money up front from the host school is important because being a high school referee can be expensive. I’ve already forked out $60 for the course and we’re told that we must pay our assignor an additional $1.50 for each game we get--about $35 in my case, twice that much in Bill’s case. We’ll make between $37 and $41 a game.
I am heartbroken to learn that the new, FIFA-certified fuchsia referee jersey for which I just paid $55 cannot be used. I need a $40 orange high-school-only model, the one that makes former football linemen such as Bill and me look like giant pumpkins.
I’m also convinced that the mad dash to the parking lot we have been advised to carry out is the real reason we had to take the physical, conducted one early, early overcast Saturday morning at Fountain Valley High after a late, late night of sports-reporting. The official line, however, is that the results will be used to determine which level of boys and girls--varsity, junior varsity or frosh/soph--we will be assigned in our rookie year.
“Hey, guys, listen to me,” Padilla said at the 7 a.m. start of the 12-minute run. “If you feel dizzy or faint, stop. We don’t want any problems. You’re all going to pass. But if you don’t complete the physical, we’ll need a note from your doctor that says it’s all right for you to be out on the field.”
Back in the meeting hall, our instructors have finished the lecture and have turned off the overhead projector. They’re collecting the roll sheet and posting our test scores from a previous meeting. The next time most of us meet again, it will be on a soccer field somewhere, wearing, no doubt, that ugly orange shirt.
