SC Soccer Forums SCSoccer.com Forums Girls Varsity Soccer Refs

Certainly, fans (especially) and coaches (too often) are guilty guilty guilty of these charges—

BUT recently and on several occasions I have heard and have offered that a bad call went against the OTHER team—

HS refs are not perfect and we should not expect or call for perfection.

However, HS soccer refs are far too often way below acceptable. That is the real string that holds the complaints here together.

When they are poor, they hurt BOTH teams and the quality of the game. When I complain, I am focusing on that BIG picture. 99% of the time if we claim bad ref'ing cost US the match, we are being delusional. Bad refs hurt the GAME.

Good advice Chapindad . . . I have not followed it as often as I would like . . . however, I will continue to strive.

I will add that I tend to get angriest at the referees when my daughters team is playing poorly. Interesting dynamic - we certainly can't blame our little girls! If we are going to blame the referees for our losses, then we need to give them the credit when we win - sage advice from an "old" coach.

>>[Chapindad] Wasting time by the other team when winning is as close to devils work as possible unless your the winning team then it is just part of the game.<<

Really, really funny...

Education, Fair play and Traditions. We as coaches fail sometimes in educating our players as much as we can. The Laws are written in a way to allow soccer to be the great game that it is.
Often we expect refs to do more than they should on the pitch.
Match example: Red team player at the top of the 18 swings and misses the ball. Falls flat on his back, stays down (injured?). Blue team attempts to play ball up and out of touch as they were taught. Whistle blows players is attended to and gets up. Ref calls drop ball at top of 18.
1) not 100% correct but done often enough. Should be indirect for team in possession or allow ball out of touch for throw in.
Now the part of fair play. Red team should'nt be attempting possession on the drop. I won't go into detail why.
We cannot demand more till we provide more. I volunteer to provide more.

Coach Tim, first of all it is "Laws" by FIFA. SCHSL/NFHS it is rules. There appears to be no oversight organization for soccer officials. There are not quality control measures in place to vindicate the good officials and eliminate the incompetent. The only requirement for SCHSL officials is to pass their test. I have been informed that the testing environment is less than stringent with little qulaity control. Not very surprising considering the SCHSL. The SCHSL does not have to follow NFHS rules according to their General Counsel: John Black.

There are no quality control measures in place, and I would regretfully agree that there are some less than satisfactory refs out there. But show me one person who is perfect in their respective profession. And if you 'eliminate' these refs, you will probably then have 3/4 or less number in the ref pool needed for all the games played. And there are not a significant number of new refs who can or are willing to fill those slots. Until the atmosphere and environment to be a soccer ref improves, i.e., zero tolerance regarding abuse/heckling, the same refs will just take the same abuse; as opposed to having a system in place where a significant number of dedicated soccer fans get their ref certification, and you have a large enough pool of refs where there can be quality control and improvement plans in place. As it stands now, there are so many games, that all refs, regardless of their individual abilities, are needed to cover the games.

i havnt read this whole thread but here is a few things that went on with refs last night.refs did not know what a foul was on either side of the ball.had 2 hand balls in the box.no pk given.a direct kick was given about 5 yards from the goal and he lined the whole team up in the goal.the other ref never blew his whistle.i found out after the game that the refs were asking our coach rules during the game.this is a second year coach that never played soccer.
there are games that get rough and out of hand beacuse the refs but alot of the blame falls to the coaches for letting it continue or teaching it.some of what these girls do is a learned behavior.coaches are telling them what to do because the refs are letting so much go.one of the refs last night was told about girls not going for the ball and just kicking people.his response was that he cannot call a foul unless they fall down.i know it is hard to find refs and playing with only two is not ideal but something has to be done.it is no wonder that there is such a rise is girls injuries.

Laws, rules, semantics...the regulations that govern the way the game is played remain the same regardless of what we term them. Perhaps the SCHSL does not "have" to adopt NFHS rules as their own, but in the soccer rules section of the SCHSL constitution, it is stated that "National Federation rules will be used in all games." For the SCHSL to do otherwise would be a violation of its own rules (which, by the way, revisits the red-card-for-incidental-profanity rule, which is in conflict with a specific NFHS rule...but we've been there). So, with a standardized set of rules in place, it should be possible to have a standardized education system for officials so that everyone can be on the same page. Maybe instead of trying to get rid of "bad refs," we should be lobbying for a better program to educate and prepare GOOD officials. We've been fortunate this year to work with officials who have consistently been fair, sportsmanlike, cooperative, and conscientious. I can honestly say that not a single goal we've given up was due to "bad officiating." There are a lot of good people out there who make mistakes; I'd like to think of myself as one of them. Perhaps if the training regimen is stepped up a bit, we could have more good people making fewer mistakes, rather than well-intentioned people caught in the middle of hard feelings.

Chapindad,

Well said. I too do my best at keeping my mouth shut during the matches I attend. We had a ref during a club match that refused a goal scoring opportunity to a player because as he stated "your team already has 3 goals". This to me is controlling the outcome of a match based on his personal scoring objectives. Refs have a difficult time as the parents can in some cases entice their players to step up the physical play for revenge and this goes for both the men and women sides. Maybe each parent should be required to ref one match to experience the joy of refereeing. I have refed other sports and know this is not something one does only for the money. Anyone have any other options for increasing the knowledge of parent/spectators of soccer matches?