I envision a long post somewhere in the none-too-distant future... it's been an interesting weekend since I last posted; I'm almost glad that it's nearly over, not so much because I want the weekend to be over as I am that the hard part of it is over. I had seven YMCA soccer games to ref at Snow Hinton Park this weekend, five of them yesterday, and they went less than smoothly, but I will get to that. The good news is the Bama won last night, beating the Bulldogs of Mississippi State 30-14 and becoming elibible to play in a post-season bowl. The stadium was rocking last night and it was louder than I believe it has been since Oklahoma came to Bryant-Denny last year. It made the three extra hours of standing up on my nearly dead feet worthwhile. I honestly don't know how I made it through as much of last night as I did without falling asleep from sheer physical exhaustion, I guess I was just excited. I went and post-game tailgated with Austin Dalgo's family and some friends from RUF, it's always fun to have free food, o and I drank Anheuser-Busch water in a can, which was quite interesting, I think it was leftover from the hurricane provisions in Mobile. Very soon thereafter, I conked out on the couch at Austin and Alex's place while watching the USC game before I woke up and realized that I really needed to go to bed=) I did get a good 9 hours of sleep once I got back to the dorm at 12, which was really refreshing and needed before church this morning. I got to go out to Marshall's for a few minutes for First Feast before I had to go back to the fields for my last two games of the weekend (fortunately the third one I was supposed to have was rescheduled, so I was able to flee from the wrath of the people that probably really wanted to wring my neck after the second game...). On that note, I will begin to explain why I will never recommend refereeing as a potential part-time job to anyone..
Let me begin by saying that I have never been a big fan of referees because it always seems like they're biased against my team (which in many cases, they have been, but we'll not go into that to save me from boisterous ranting..) and I have always been quick to criticize the refs on their perceived ineptitude. After this weekend, I have a much greater appreciation for how they have to handle themselves with everything they have to put up with and all the negative perceptions which are normally formed about them. There are too many times where refs are forced into the position of being "the bad guy", and the darn thing about it, is that it has got to be one of the most helpless feelings in the world, because somebody's gonna get mad either way [the secret is to figure out who's going to get the least mad at you and call against them 100% of the time... and yes, I am kidding (well, at least mostly..)] because you're going to have to either make a call or not make a call and then you're gonna have unhappy (and sometimes irate) people on your hands which are a lot less fun to deal with than the game itself. So anyways, I digress, let me start at the beginning of my "fun-filled" weekend... I had to get up about 7:30 (on a Saturday, so feel at least a little bit sorry for me..) in order to make it out to the fields prior to first game at 8:30 (whoever schedules stuff this early on a weekend anyways? I mean, c'mon). Non-coincidentally, Tuscaloosa had the coldest weather of the year come in the day before and it hadn't warmed up a whole lot and the fields were still soaking wet with dew, so the first game wasn't too pleasant since my feet were squelching in my cleats until they started drying up in the 4th quarter, but at least there were no major altercations other than over-protective parents yelling at me every time their child hit the ground and I didn't call a foul, but considering it was between the 1st and 3rd seeded teams in the Under 10 tournament, it really wasn't all that unusual. The second game went even smoother because my cleats and the field were drying up, but the first signs of fatigue starting showing themselves by the end of that second game. Then came the drama game, the matchup between the 1st seeded team who had played earlier that day and the 2nd seeded teams in the U10 league, and I was prepared for the worst through prior encounters with the 2nd team's head coach, who had an established reputation of competitiveness and ref-bashing. Ironically, I didn't have any trouble from her the entire game, and she even said I did a good job. Everything went fine until the 3rd quarter when there was a particularly vicious trip of a yellow team(the #1 seed) player that I refrained from calling because it would have nullified the yellow team's advantage which resulted in a shot on goal and a score for the yellow team(a perfect execution of the rules if I may say so myself=)), so the yelling of "WHAT?!? ARE YOU CRAZY REF? abruptly changed into jubilant shouts of celebration. All is fine and good until another questionable trip of the same player occurred and again I didn't call anything because the opposing player was going for the ball, but the boy's father didn't appear to come to the same conclusion, and I immediately hear screams of rage and the words: "WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU, REF? IF HE INJURES MY CHILD, I WILL SUE YOU!!! I partially find this rant amusing because I figure he's just caught up in the moment until the break inbetween the next period where I see the guy who apparently yelled at me furiously conversing with the YMCA Soccer Administrator while angrily pointing in the direction of "THAT REF WHO WON'T CALL THE FOUL!", which results in my sudden wish not to run into aforementioned furious guy after the game... It would be just my luck that this game would finish regulation tied 2-2, which meant we had to play an extra 6 minute overtime period, and after six minutes of goal-less soccer, the game proceeds to a shootout. As am I little more than confused about the rules concerning this predicament, I am made to look really bad by the coach of the yellow team who prefers to confirm my ideological rules with the Administrator. It seemed really straightforward to me that the ball is placed at a predetermined spot in front of the goal and then the alternating team's kickers attempts to score when I give him the OK that he can kick the ball when he's ready, using the whistle only when the kicker doesn't understand "Go when you're ready". But I am faced with a problem when one of the yellow team's kickers kicks the ball past the goalie and into the goal before I had moved to my position, turned around, or given the OK. The yellow team, naturally, assumes they have scored a point and begins celebrating while the blue team's assistant coach had not missed the fact that I had not blown my whistle or given an OK, and is quick to remind me of this fact. After momentarily pondering the unenviable position I have found myself in, I decided that the kick must be taken again. This results in enough angry protests from the yellow side originally, but when the second attempt does not go in, I have a seething crowd of yellow-clad individuals on my hands that would undoubtedly murder me if they found me alone in a dark alley. The first set of best-of-5 kicks also ends in a tie so there is another best-of-5 set(it was beyond me why it didn't become a sudden death kick, but I do what I'm told) which results in a victory for the blue team. On top of this, I had begun having major leg cramps during the overtime period which caused me to call my boss to see if there was anyone available that could take my last two games. After getting off the cell with my boss, who basically told me I would have to through the last two games since no one else was available, I am faced by a bold woman who sees it as her duty to tell me how cheap it was for me to take that goal away and who doesn't necessarily want to listen to me explain why it was within the rules for me to make that decision. I see someone else waiting in line after her who looks a little too much like the furious father who had threatened me with legal action, which wasn't a tremendously exhilariting feeling. He naturally wanted to know how exactly that wasn't tripping, but I will give him credit, he listened to my explanation, shook my hand, and said he understood that I had a difficult job even if he did agree to disagree with me. The last two games of the afternoon were fairly uneventful save for the fact that my fourth game also went to overtime and then shootout which resulted in it taking up an extra thirty minutes. The coaches in the last two games were very understanding when I explained to them that I would probably be walking through the game and possibly miss some calls, and they were of the opinion that the kids were out there to have fun anyways (why can't more people be like that?). When I finally finished my last game on Saturday after 3:30 p.m., I remember thinking that I would make sure to tell Bill that I never wanted to ref five games in a row ever again and that I would kill for something to eat=). Fast forward to this afternoon when I had to return to the place of my most recent discomfort and ref two more games. I was relieved to find that the first game consisted of two teams that I had not had a conflict with, and it went rather smoothly as expected with no overtime and no cursed shootouts because the blue team (the No. 2 seed from the previous day's drama game) won 3-0 and advanced to the championship game next week [let me just say, for the record, I do not intend to ref that championship game next week(unless the bribe is good enough..), I've had about enough U10 tournament games after this weekend]. I was not so fortunate in the second game as I saw that the yellow team had returned to fight another day in the losers bracket (notice I said another day and not days, yeah, this sounds like fun, don't it?;-)). I found myself hoping that the yellow team would win so that I would not be the object of their enmity a second day in a row, but of course, I wouldn't let that get in the way of calling a fair game. The game was really uneventful as a whole; the green team scored a goal in the first half and the yellow team had more than enough opportunities to score, but they didn't. There was a bigger girl on the green team that was pushing ppl around, and I probably should have found at least one occasion to call a foul on her, and I did warn her to watch her physical ways, but I apparently didn't do enough to justify to the yellow coach that I was calling the game fairly because he approached me at halftime to protest, in a fairly mature way, that I had let her get away with so much. He said he had never protested to a ref before, but that he felt that he needed to talk to me especially after the previous day's game (yes, he didn't fail to remind me about how I had taken that boy's goal away and how they had really won that game save for my calls). I really didn't know what to say, so I basically shut my mouth, which is why I figure most refs do that exact same thing, and I told him that I would keep an eye on the girl in the second half. If anything, my calls were more favorable to the yellow team because they got away with a lot more pushing and shoving and also a hand ball that probably should have been a penalty kick for the green team, but whatever, I realize that the losing team never sees it that way. The green team put everyone around their goal for the second half and prevented the yellow team from scoring, which really surprised me because I thought the yellow team would win hands down, but it didn't keep me from leaving as soon as the game was over in order to avoid running into anymore irate fans who weren't used to losing. lol, so that is the long and boring account of my weekend experiences as a soccer ref. I hope that someone will be saved from making the same mistake of an income choice as I did. In closing, they don't pay me nearly enough to do this=)
Seeing as how I've been typing a really long time on my account of "Two Days in the Life of a Soccer Ref" and the fact that I am pretty hungry at this very moment, I must leave abruptly with the promise of returning someday soon. However, I can't leave without saying ROLL TIDE!
You hold the answer deep within your own mind. Consciously, you've forgotten it; That's the way the human mind works: whenever something is too unpleasant, too shameful, for us to entertain, we reject it, we erase it from our memory. But the imprint is always there...
And these guys are on our team too... well, actually, these are the guys we wish we were...
