SC Soccer Forums SCSoccer.com Forums Boys Varsity Soccer schsl referees

And THEY'RE the ones who should be fighting for across-the-board reform and improvement!

The reality is that at least in the upstate, we do not have enough referees. I agree with everyone, officiating, in general has been poor this season, but where does that meet up with the practicality of simply having enough refs to even do a game? The system is not efficient and not fair to players, coaches, or the refs themselves, but how can it be fixed?

the reality of it is, the best options for refs are ex players. With the abundance of coaching opportunities at clubs these days, the ex players that still want to be involved in some form of soccer are coaching and making a decent dime doing it. Once they are done coaching, they dont want to put up with the hassle of going to games and giving up nites and weekends....thats probably why they stopped coaching in the first place. So you basically end up with people reffing who either dont know the game as well and are doing it for the money or you have older people who cant quite keep up with the younger players and changing game.
I dont know if there is a way to fix it to be honest. I used to be a ref and still consider myself capable of keeping up with the high level players but i just dont want to give up nites and weekends for the low pay involved.

On a recent weekend, I went out to Patriots Point to watch a pair of Academy soccer matches. I was happy to see a handful of evaluators on-hand to see a "new" fairly young official, who had recently arrived from New Jersey, and was deemed worthy (by credentials) of an Academy assignment. I also saw a small-sided game, being worked by a long (long) time local official, who is to be applauded for his dedication.
That said, to me, this was a perfect place/time to work with 2-3 top, very young newcomers. Have THEM work the small-sided game, with the vet mentoring them. Have THEM meet and speak with higher-level evaluators and assigners about their goals, availability, etc.
Alas, no.
Opportunity missed. Again.

The problem with the USSF refereeing gig, is that unless you are a level 5 by the time you are 22 to 24, you will go nowhere. You also have to kiss so much butt, and be able to travel all over the US to do academy games/other big tournaments that nobody with a real job has the time to do it. They also expect you to be able to drop everything that you are doing at a moments notice to travel 2 states away to do a game. Forget that if you have a family or a real job.

There needs to be a HUGE change of the way they pick and develop officials in the US. How is it that MLB, NFL etc...use professional referees...and the MLS uses officials that are questionable at best at times? The pay for MLS referees is poor....I can go on. From my past experience, I can say that a lot of the official problems stem from recruiting/deveopment/retention of good officials. Maybe if it wasn't so much of a good old boys club, you would get good younger officials to be involved in officiating long term. Instead you get a select couple people involved with officiating in each state that hand select who THEY want to go on, and everyone else is left behind/out. It is a broken system.

I have said this before on a previous thread.

The major problem with the quality of officiating in high school soccer in this state (and a lot of others) is the number of games being played on the SAME night.

Everyone in South Carolina for SCHSL plays on a Friday night. EVERYONE. If your area association has only 40 officials and there are 15 venues with games in one night, what do you expect?
The easiest solution is to stop playing the same nights. Then you run into problems with SCISA but even that can be solved.

My solution is simple..make girls soccer a fall sport and boys soccer a spring sport. This will also improve officiating since the schools that do not have a JV team will only have one game that night, so the officials won't be tired like they are now, when they are in the second half of a boys game, and after they had just ran for 2 hours straight in the girls game and the first half of the boys game. The players would get home earlier if you make it a 6 pm start. Finally, if you have three hotly contested matches where you need good officials, if they are spread out over the week instead of all of them on the same night, you can predict better quality officials.

Until the schedules balance out so that you can spread your limited pool of officials out, you will never fix the problem.

As the above poster said about game fees. What do you think would happen if you started paying the high school referees the same rate as college officials? In some cases you get what you don't pay for.

As someone who coaches another sport, I can tell you the problem with coaches speaking up. Strike 1: Some flat-out don't care. Strike 2: Some fear reprisals from vindictive assigners and officials. Strike 3: Even if you raise a valid point, nothing happens.