SC Soccer Forums SCSoccer.com Forums Girls Varsity Soccer Refs

Great thought, and works well for tennis, but one minor drawback...

At most high schools, soccer is played on the football field...which might get a little crowded during the fall season...

As a winter-season (Nov.-Feb.) sport, you have weather considerations...I know we're in the sunny South, but there's a reason winter sports are all indoor sports...

Now, if we can just get our ADs to sponsor us all a separate, dedicated soccer stadium--!

Colleges are playing NCAA playoff games up north in December. We could end our boys HS season here in sunny South Carolina at the end of November.

As for sharing the football stadium.....they some how pull it off in NC.

In Illinois they do boys soccer in the fall and girls in the spring. If they didn't there would not be enough referees.

I'd like to find out how NC manages sharing the facilities between football and soccer; maybe we could learn something from that. Especially for smaller schools, too, there could be a problem with finding enough athletes to go around if football and soccer seasons overlap; I know when I was coaching 1A boys, the majority of my team consisted of off-season football players; they enjoyed soccer and did well at it, but forced to make a choice between the sports, I have little doubt that football would get the lion's share of male athletes.

Now, then, if we had girls' soccer in the fall and boys in the spring...boys' soccer wouldn't have to compete for athletes with football, only baseball, tennis (usually very small numbers) and track; girls' soccer wouldn't have to compete with softball and track, but smaller volleyball and tennis teams. So, no additional conflicts with other sports for boys, and actually fewer conflicts for the girls=more available athletes to go around--plus more officials to go around. Now, if we could just find a way for two sports to share the same stadium in the same season without tripping all over one another...