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 four 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 a "Area", "Section", or
"National" 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
| Referee badge level by player age |
| Player Age |
Minimal |
Ideal |
| Over 14 |
Area |
National |
| Under 14 |
Regional(?)/Area |
Section |
| Under 12 |
Regional |
Area |
| Under 10 |
Regional |
Regional |
| Under 8 |
Referee |
Referee |
with referees
starting each age group at the minimal level and upgrading before they move up
to the next age group.
Of course, having a higher level badge won't in itself make you
a better referee - there are many fine referees with only Regional 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 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.
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 Menlo Park 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 Menlo Park 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.
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. The 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.
- The local Women's United Soccer Assocation team, the San Jose CyberRays , also plays
its home games in Spartan Stadium.
- 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 Menlo Park. (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!