Becoming a Better Referee
If you're already a certified AYSO referee.... that's
great! This page has suggestions for things you can do to become
a better referee. Of course, not all of these are for
everyone. Some folks help out for a year or so when their kids
are young and then drop out; other
folks take up soccer refereeing as a serious hobby, for the fun of
it. Most
are somewhere in between. But all of us, while we are refereeing,
will enjoy it more and do a better job for the kids if we improve our
skills some. This page has some ideas for how to do that --
follow them as far as your energy and enthusiasm keeps them fun for you.
There are five different kinds of things
that you can do to improve your refereeing.
Classes and Clinics
Clinics provide a great way to refresh, reinforce and
extend your Law and refereeing knowledge. They are one of the
very few places where you can bring all those questions that puzzle you
and get answers. The Region (and the surrounding units of AYSO)
provides classes and clinics for all levels of referee. Consult
the clinic schedule
for details, time and places.
Upgrading
Some clinics are designed to prepare you to upgrade
your referee badge -- to an "Intermediate" (old Area), "Advanced" (old
Section), or "National" (combined old N1/N2) level. If you have
held your current badge for a year or so, and particularly if you plan
to start refereeing older players soon, we highly recommend that you
upgrade to the next level of referee badge. Ideally, the referees
working each age group would be qualified as follows with referees starting each age group at the minimal
level and upgrading before they move up to the next age group:
| Referee badge level by player
age |
| Player Age |
Minimal |
Ideal |
| Over 14 |
Intermediate |
National |
| U14 |
Regional?/Intermediate |
Advanced |
| U12 |
Regional
|
Intermediate |
| U10 |
Regional |
Regional |
| U7/U8/U9 |
U7/U8/U9 |
U7/U8/U9 |
.
Of course, having a higher level badge won't in
itself make you a better referee -- there are many fine referees with
only Regional Referee badges and some "not so fine" ones with higher
level
badges. But going
for an upgrade does help -- it exposes you to the issues that will be
of
concern with older players; it will challenge you to polish your Law
knowledge; and it will give you a chance to get formally observed doing
a game by a more experienced referee, who can help you with your
technique. If you might be interested in upgrading, review the
new requirements for each level of
Referee Certification, plan on attending an upgrade clinic
, and get in touch with the Region Referee
Administrator who will be happy to guide you through the process.
Mentoring
Experienced referees
often make themselves available to observe other referees on the field
and to give them constructive feedback. This is a great way to
receive
good coaching, learn new techniques, become more aware of different
aspects of the game and your role in it, and improve your performance
as
a referee. We are trying to expand and improve our Mentoring Program
this year. If you would like to mentor or be mentored, or have
suggestions on what we can do to help you improve as a referee, contact
the
Region Mentoring Coordinator.
Read a book, watch a video...
Doing games and attending classes are the best ways of
improving your refereeing. But games and classes aren't always
available when you want them. Books and videos are. Books provide
analysis and examples that help structure your Law knowledge.
Videos provide that too, but also give you a wonderful opportunity to
practice your eyes, as well as your head.
Two books that you should always have near at hand
are the current editions of The Laws of the Game and the Palo
Alto Regional Referee's Handbook. The Region will provide you
with both of these. But there are many other books and videos
that are worth reading/watching. A good collection is
available in the Palo Alto Library.
If you really want to own your own library of this
material, the following stores carry referee books and instructional
videos
These are not affiliated with or endorsed by AYSO.
...or you could even browse some Web pages
There's a very wide range of referee material on the
Web, of very diverse quality. In addition to the official FIFA , USSF , and AYSO sites, many
organizations and individuals (like us!) have posted their
thoughts. Any search engine asked for "soccer referee" will
return a screenful (or twenty). Alternatively, you could visit
MWSRA's Soccer Referee
Related Links which is a Yahoo-like organized collection of over
600 links to soccer referee pages from all over the world
(unfortunately, this site has not been updated for quite a few years so
some of the links will no longer be valid).
One site of special note is Ask a Referee which is organized
by Jim Allen (Director of Assessment for the USSF
Referee program). The answers to questions that are posted there are
not
"official" USSF rulings, but they are written by some of the same
people
who make those rulings.
An English site that has a host of information is
the
Corsham
Referee web site. It has many pages of explanations of
various laws and
fouls, and advice for referees.
Finally, there are two online email-distributed
discussion lists that can broaden your perspective on refereeing.
The first is SOCREF-L, a list devoted to soccer refereeing. It receives
contributions from all
over the world, from referees at all levels of sophistication (from Jim
Allen on down), on all aspects of refereeing. Just
watching the discussion flow by is an education. To subscribe,
send an email message to
LISTSERV@PETE.URI.EDU with "SUBSCRIBE SOCREF-L" by itself in the
body of the message. T he second discussion list is AYSO-L which, as
its name suggests, focuses on AYSO-related matters. The
discussion isn't limited to refereeing and extends into topics on
regional management, education programs, National policies, referee
recruitment and many other matters. The list has a number of
regular participants whose views and experience are worth learning
about, and some of the AYSO National staff monitor it. To
subscribe, visit the
Subscription Settings page for AYSO-L and follow the instructions.
Two caveats about these lists. First, the
quality of information is highly variable, so be wary of acting on
anything you read without getting confirmation from reliable local
sources. Second, SOCREF-L can run to 100 messages a day, and
AYSO-L sometimes has several dozen. Many subscribers get the list
in "digest" form (a once a day batch) rather than as separate messages,
so as not to lose control of their mailboxes. The introductory
message you receive as a subscriber tells you how to do this.
Watching Soccer
Watching good soccer is both fun and slowly builds up
an appreciation of the "spirit" of the game which is hard to get just
from books and clinics. We have lots of choices, both on TV and
locally.
Soccer on TV
Whereas, even a few years ago, there was almost no
first class soccer shown on American television, now there is a steady
stream
of European, South and Central American, and World Cup qualifying games
available, not to mention games from the US professional league (Major
League Soccer). By far the best source of information on
televized soccer is Oliver Tse's wonderful site Soccer on US TV.
This has details of literally dozens of games a week -- some on TV
channels (and from countries) that you've barely heard of. Load
up your VCR (many of the games are shown live from where ever in the
world they are being played) and soak it all in!
Local Soccer
Seeing soccer live, rather than on TV, has one great
advantage -- you can watch what you're interested in (the refereeing!)
rather
than what the cameras choose to show you. And, there's some quite good
soccer
available to watch locally.
- The local Major League Soccer team, the San Jose Earthquakes
(formerly the Clash), plays its home games in Spartan Stadium in San
Jose.
- College soccer is a little less exalted, but
it's still full of interest from an officiating point of view (games
are occasionally officiated by our local FIFA referees), it's fun to
watch, and the Stanford home games couldn't be more convenient for
folks in Palo Alto. (Even more so this year, as both teams
will play under lights in the evenings (Friday, usually) rather
than mid-afternoon, mid-week, as they often
did in years past.) Schedules and other information are available
on the
Web for both the Stanford men's and Stanford women's soccer teams.
- There are also a variety of other college
soccer teams in the Bay Area, not to mention adult leagues and a
variety of youth "select" teams whose games can be watched and learned
from.
Fitness
Referees run! We run to follow play so as to be
well-positioned to see what is happening, and to intervene if
necessary. The more easily we can do this, the better we will be able
to call the game.
For the very youngest age groups, this is no problem
at all. But, as "When
you're fit..." points out, this gets harder as the players (and the
referees!) get older. Sooner or later, and it really ought to be
sooner, most of us will need to work on our fitness.
Of course, many of us already have fitness programs
of some sort. And for most of us, a simple, light (but regular!)
exercise
regime that includes light running will easily do what's
needed.
But, if you have doubts, look at the pages How fit? which tells
you how to measure your fitness against the demands of the various AYSO
player age groups, and
Get fit! which contains some advice about what to do if the results
are not what you might have hoped.
Also, look at Doug Semark's "Presence Lends
Conviction" presentation from the Spring 1997 Section
Meetings. This has stretching and warm-up exercises that make a
fine light workout, as well as a great pre-game.
Now's the time to redeem that New Year's resolution
--
start a gentle workout regime now, so you can outrun the kids in the
Fall!