2019 IHSAA Basketball Tourney

[tweeterhawk]

Interesting to hear about soccer. I know nothing about it but it looks like you run a lot. We are starting HS soccer in my town and they are looking for refs, is it something that is difficult to pick up? I’m ignorant, but it doesn’t seem to be a sport that has a million rules and a billion nuances like football or baseball. They are offering pretty good pay so it was something I was tossing around if it was learnable by someone who never played.

As far as being away from the crowd, football refs have it dicked. Not only are there four of you, you’re like 50 plus yds away from the douche brigade (high school parents are the worst type of spectators on the planet, but put 500 of them together and it’s like the Walking Dead herds). I took the test and stay current, but I’ve only done it twice because I can’t convince myself that I don’t have better shit to do on Friday nights than freeze my balls off standing out in a pasture.

Soccer is not terribly difficult to learn. I’ve lived and worked in two states. Both are desperate for refs; the local high school chapters will take virtually anyone and literally train them on the job.

Soccer has its nuances and caseplays. The rules for high school, club and college are similar and growing closer, but there are still differences. The gods in charge of high school seem as obsessed with uniforms, equipment and who can enter a game when and how as with the play itself and write hundreds of caseplays into their annual rules of the game book. You need to learn them.

At all levels there can be vigorous debate on certain aspects and plays. Google “Sterling offside” for an example in the past 48 hours of a raging discussion on whether a player who scored a goal was offside. Did the offside player draw the defender into active play? Did the defender deliberately play the ball, which ended up going off the offside player, thus negating the offside?

Or do an online search for “Manchester United PSG” for a back-and-forth on the foul of deliberately handling the ball.

Yes, there’s a lot of running. You work with at least one other ref (dual system) or two (diagonal system of 1 center referee and 2 side referees.) And it can be hot (I’ve started games when it’s 105), brutally cold, raining, sleeting, even snowing. Generally, though, the high school season in virtually every state misses the weather extremes.

 

[Fryowa]

Soccer is not terribly difficult to learn. I’ve lived and worked in two states. Both are desperate for refs; the local high school chapters will take virtually anyone and literally train them on the job.

Soccer has its nuances and caseplays. The rules for high school, club and college are similar and growing closer, but there are still differences. The gods in charge of high school seem as obsessed with uniforms, equipment and who can enter a game when and how as with the play itself and write hundreds of caseplays into their annual rules of the game book. You need to learn them.

At all levels there can be vigorous debate on certain aspects and plays. Google “Sterling offside” for an example in the past 48 hours of a raging discussion on whether a player who scored a goal was offside. Did the offside player draw the defender into active play? Did the defender deliberately play the ball, which ended up going off the offside player, thus negating the offside?

Or do an online search for “Manchester United PSG” for a back-and-forth on the foul of deliberately handling the ball.

Yes, there’s a lot of running. You work with at least one other ref (dual system) or two (diagonal system of 1 center referee and 2 side referees.) And it can be hot (I’ve started games when it’s 105), brutally cold, raining, sleeting, even snowing. Generally, though, the high school season in virtually every state misses the weather extremes.

In my last post I forgot to ask you what the Referee Restraining Circle is.