Dawgfan, how many shots did your kids miss? How many times did one of your players dive at somebody? Our team lost 15 games last year, we had some poorly called games, but no ref ever put one in for us. Again, as an official I have made mistakes, fortunately I don't think any affected the final outcome of the match. But I also think as a fan, coach, player, you should look at the big picture. The game is 80 minutes long. In that time is there something one of your players could have done differently? I get frustrated as well with some of the poor officiating I see. One of our refs on a regular basis was calling the foul when we had advantage. I joked with him about it and he realized that he wasn't letting the play develop. Since then, no problems with that. Last year we had a ref that made one of our players sit out two minutes with a yellow card. It wasn't a horrible foul, but did deserve a yellow. I questioned the referee and he wouldn't back down. I didn't get loud, I didn't go crazy, I remembered it is just a game. I reported it to our area head official and to the SCHSL. Problem was taken care of. We lost the game by one goal, but that ref was not the reason. I don't mean to come across as loving refs, but I just think too often we (myself included) blame them for our shortcomings. Give em a break and simply remember they are people too.
