I know officials are in short supply, but at what point is there some accountability? The overall officiating in southern Ohio is not helping any team boys or girls in any division when they get to the regional and state levels
There was a physical assault on a referee in Gallia just Saturday afternoon.
What does “accountability” mean to you as it relates to poor referee performances?
Definitely not assault.
I have seen some bad ones this year, but no need to assault anyone. Does soccer have a system in place to have the assigner or whoever go out and watch the refs like they do in football or basketball? Is there any type of review or anything like that after games? I know there is a shortage, and I don’t have an answer to the fix either.
Shortage is crazy- need some young bucks without beer bellies that can actually run. There needs to be more advertisement for HS & College kids to get out there. Have yet to see a decent official in SEO. Hope this changes soon.
There’s one assignor for most of the SE, and they work a lot of games alongside the officials—so informal assessment is always happening. But with the shortage, the practical effect of that is just knowledge of which officials are better for the tougher games… Hard to delegate a subpar official to work only middle school games for a couple season if that means the varsity games don’t have enough refs. The fact that more than half of our varsity games have two-man crews tells that story.
There’s a couple great ones. The guy that was center for WVU’s (#10 in the country) home opener does games in Athens and Washington county all the time. The crews that do the Ohio University games are often locals. There are a handful of refs based out of Athens and Marietta that are really good, but they typically don’t care to drive further SW than Alexander.
…but yeah, there needs to be a better effort to recruit. The pay is probably where it should be, but the spectators are out-of-line in too many venues. It starts at the youth level and programs building a culture of respecting the referees. Why would an 18-year-old be interested in becoming a ref if all she’s heard from her parents and coaches coming up is how awful referees are.
valid response
parents are the reason, end of story. If you have a kid in the 6-10 age range right now, there will be ZERO refs by the time they are in HS. The average age is probably 50 and why would anyone want to deal with parents? At my kids games (HS), parents for all teams are absolutely nuts with zero accountability. Anyone bashing refs should be forced to ref, but they cant because they are ignorant. If you show up to a varsity match with 2 officials its a lose/lose situation. 3 refs for a small basketball court but two for a field bigger than football.
I’ve said this for a long time. If you want to get younger people involved in officiating, we need 3 man crews. Much more likely to ease newbies in as an AR as opposed to the 2nd of a 2 man crew.
And idiot fans/parents have to start being held accountable. Maybe start videoing the stands.
Ref Unions
Just b/c someone has a beer belly doesn’t mean they can’t run.
Running to the fridge doesn’t count
Thats a great idea for three man. Spread out the experienced guys with 1 or 2 newbies. Its going to come down to the AD sitting in the front row or refs can card a coach for parents which i would think would be hilariously awesome. A player on the field yelled into the stands telling his teams own parents they were wrong and the official was right lol.
We can’t change it, we need the officials more than they care of need us. Our only hope is they change the system in which officials get assigned to matches. You can’t have grads from a school reffing all their critical home matches and not raise questions. It’s a local joke, but it’s quite true. You walk in and see the officials and you realize they have already given their home school a PK. It’s not even debatable at this point.
This is a good suggestiong. I think it would be even more effective to have rules of conduct in place for the fans, who run the risk of being ejected if those rules are violated.
Referees have the authority to remove any fan from the stands that is abusive. I don’t understand why they don’t use that authority more often.
They have the right to stop the game, seek out the administrator and ask the administrator to resolve situations. Referees are not supposed to interact with spectators directly— in soccer anyway.
Frankly, the admins need to be active in the crowd and head off problems before they escalate to the point of disruption. The 2 or 3 referees already have 22 players plus coaches and subs to keep control of, and they have tools to do so (cards). Expecting them to manage the spectators as well isn’t practical.
As for the idea that we should run 3-man crews to get new refs experience… yeah, that’s the goal, there just aren’t enough refs to do that. Every coach and most refs want 3-man crews on every game.
If 2-3 graduating seniors from the various leagues in SE Ohio that played soccer in high school would sign up and take the officiating test, the numbers would start to go up some. As a former assistant AD and principal, I have talked to former players about becoming a ref. They almost always say, “I am not putting up with idiots in the stands” Many parents do not know the rules of the game. Some complain about contact. If you go anywhere around the Columbus/Cincinnati areas, play is much more aggressive than southern Ohio. I have attended my grandchildren’s pee games and some of the fan behavior is horrible. It’s a GAME! Refs are not out to “get” your kid, they are not going to intentionally cheat and they do not care who wins the game. Why do we not have more officials in all sports, not just soccer? Parents. There are two schools in Scioto county that quickly come to mind. By all means, some of you who B, M and C, take the OHSAA test and give the game a try. The kids on the teams deserve better!
Most conferences have an assignor.