[Okay -- sarcasm and trying to be funny switched fully "off."]I have a bias toward wanting to fix a problem that's been raised, particularly if it is raised repeatedly with no apparent movement toward a solution. There are several issues that I've heard about repeatedly in the years I've paid attention to youth soccer with respect to referees:
- We need money to pay for three referees in high school soccer.
- We need three referees in high school soccer [the original post by "Farkus" that got us here.]
- We need better (higher quality) referees in high school soccer.
- We need more referees in the pool for high school soccer.
- We need parents to be more respectful/quieter so we can get more referees in high school soccer.
Now, I don't expect that the answer is trivial or it would have been solved already. In terms of the "quality" of referees, I've always thought that this was like everything else -- there are some great ones, some bad ones, and most are good. I've seen relatively few poor referees but as some coaches complained about "mechanical whistle guy" one can make a big impression. But a couple of bad ones doesn't really reflect on the group as a whole -- so I don't think quality is really the issue.
The parents issue gets raised every year and while I don't have a practical (perhaps an ideological, but not a practical) problem enforcing a noise ban, it just doesn't feel like it's the "root" of the problem. Maybe it is -- maybe girls high school soccer parents yell more than high school football, basketball, baseball, or whatever parents -- but it just doesn't feel like a noise ban is going to resolve the oft-raised "we need 3 referees" issue. I absolutely stand ready to be corrected and instructed on the issue, however.
That leaves the following questions. Do we really need three referees in high school soccer to increase the quality and/or decrease the risk of injury? If no, then we can go back to complaining about other things - parents yelling, great teams not ranked, which upstate team will dominate the state in 2009-2010, kick-ball versus long-ball, or whatever. If yes, then the question is what do we do to make it happen. There are two relatively competing theories dueling for primacy of a "root cause": there aren't enough referees
or there are enough referees but there isn't enough money. I agree with someone who said that they thought parents would pay to increase quality and/or decrease the risk of injury -- that's why I asked Coach P the questions I did. I think that the money thing can be solved.
If it has to do
more with the number of referees in the pool, then the problem has to be attacked in another direction -- in other words, if everyone is trying to get three referees and can't because of the sheer availability, then you have a more difficult (but still potentially solvable) problem.
Anyone want to go on record as to whether (a) we really need three referees to increase the quality of calls and/or decrease injury and then for extra credit if the answer to (a) is "yes" then (b) is the primary root cause a lack of money or a too small referee pool?
