Referee Shortage - Parents Pack Your Kits

I think this is funny.

They want to get refs, they need field marshals to kick problem parents out. Maybe even hire off-duty police. One per complex per day should be enough.

Obviously there is a shortage. I don't believe the spring will be as bad as the fall is now. Thin of all the ECNL/GA/DPL/ ECRL kids that are certified but can't / won't ref because they have games on both Saturday & Sunday. I am thinking each club is losing 6-12 people every weekend because the refs are playing and even traveling.

I believe AFU did a quick certification course so new refs could be ARs for internal games immediately. This likely added a dozen + to the pool and hopefully alleviated some of the pressure, but I'm sure they still need more.

All very true. If I had to rank the reasons for the ref shortage:

1) Parents / coaches who make the experience miserable
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2) Hard to commit when your / your kids' games get moved so often (sometimes because of ref shortages)
3) Cost of getting started vs. initial earnings (have to work 3 games for 3-4 weeks as an A/R just to pay back investment in certification/kit)
4) Uncertainty of work/payment - if it rains you don't get to work but you have to hold the time until the morning
5) A clunky assignor system that is hard to navigate


My kids ref for money. I do it to be with them (and for some exercise). Once they get signed up, the only thing they ever complain about are the adults who act like children. I feel the same way.

I bring my bag every time I go to the fields for one of my kid's games. This fall, I have had to AR my own kid's games several times due to shortages. For those type of events, I don't care if I get paid or not. I just want my kid's team to have ARs, and I want the pressure to be off the center to be able to call a normal game without having to worry about having to do double and triple duty in the center.

I don't like ARing my own kid's games as I have to be absolutely quiet and can not even cheer for my own kid when they do good things. I also see the conflict of interest issue, which I can personally put aside and be fair with my calls, but I would rather them have an AR that fully can call a game versus some club parent who can only raise their flag up if it goes out of bounds which is why I will always volunteer to do it if need be.

Spring will not be as bad, as someone else said Fall ball loses a ton of referees (and their parents) when their kid's have games Saturday and/or Sunday especially when those games are late in the afternoon. That basically means you lose 6-12 (I would say most big clubs probably lose more than that) to players and parents that can't referee due to their own or their own kid's games.

I have thick skin though. I can deal with the parents and the occasional coach, but our club has an issue with 15+ aged kids who are good referees but won't center because of the parents (and usually it isn't the home team parents in our case). I will say you can tell whose kid is whose parents by their jawing on the field. Generally when a kid gets a yellow for dissent it is their parents that are the ones on the sideline mouthing off all game as well.

I think clubs if they truly want more referees need to flip half or more of the cost of the class and/or the kits for the referees with a signed promise they will work X amount of games each season, or better yet maybe reduce cost of Select by 15-20% or so for any kids that become referees and referee X amount of games each season for the club.

Agreed. Have an older son and his Sunday game this weekend only had a center & 1 AR. They didn't even ask for a parent volunteer, which I wasn't bothered by.


One thought I had though- my son's team won by a ton, and was clearly better than the opponent (they were supposed to be promoted this fall based on last fall's results but weren't because of an influx of teams from Georgia Soccer, apparently). In the first half, the AR was on our offensive end and made a few (correct) offside calls. For the 2nd half, I honestly thought he should have stayed on our end because the other team was probably never going to be offside, while we were likely to be a few times at least, since the ball was in our half almost all game. The center tried his best and did make a few offside calls against us- 1 of which was incorrect, but 2-3 were right- but he was in a tough spot. I just thought common sense should have prevailed and the AR- in a clearly lopsided game like that- should have been calling the side where offside calls were going to be far more likely. But I'm sure they did what protocol told them they were supposed to.

I'm not a fan of using parents as "Club Officials" as they will try to signal direction or offside anyway even when you instruct them to just point the flag up when the ball goes out.  I prefer to just just keep more toward the side with no AR when working with only 1 AR and not ask for any parent.  It is just more hassle to ask a parent (unless they are certified themselves) then to just work with 1 AR.

That being said I would never move my AR to the other side if I only had 1 AR.  The reason being in fairness of the match if one team got the benefit of a few close "offside" calls in their favor, the other should get that same benefit in the 2nd half.  If you move it 1 AR to the other side it could be perceived as being biased to one team.  This happened in my daughter's game in the GSA tournament, and I thought it highly inappropriate and when it was all said and done it did affect the outcome of the game doing that as in the 1st half the other team got away with a lot of offside goals as they did in the 2nd half as well since the Center moved the AR to our attacking end in the 2nd half as well.   

So I would say never flip the AR mid-game when only having one.   Other Referees can chime in.  I would like to hear what they think on that.

Interesting perspective.

The game I did was 5-0 at halftime... lots of close offsides calls in the 1st half as the ball was constantly moving toward the net and in rec the girls weren't conscious of positioning.  It feels like it would have been far more disruptive to make a bunch of judgement calls in the 2nd half myself from a poor position.  I was glad I moved the AR at half and I didn't think twice about it.  

In a moderately close game (one played on both sides of the field), I can see what you mean.  I would default to having each team "suffer" from having (or not having) an AR on their attacking side for half the game rather than have the AR be lonely on the far side of the field.  In a meaningful game (especially a tournament), yeah, never.

Final score was 7-1 as the better team sort of called off the dogs.

Parents and siblings as stand-ins are usually more trouble than they are worth.

That’s actually grounds for over turning the result or forcing a replay of the match. Can’t have one Ref/AR only work for one team/side. It’s like running a two person crew like HS, it’s just not allowed.

While I agree the safety factor is 1st in all youth soccer matches, sufficient safe refereeing can be had with only 1AR and a Center.  I have done it numerous times and I just keep my positioning where I can see the side of the field with out AR more than the other side, and yes the weight falls more heavily on the 1 AR and the Center but it can be done even in higher level games (ECNL, GPL, NPL, etc...) just fine.  I agree there should be full sets of referees for these games but in this climate right now not all of them are going to get that for various reasons or another.

In a U12 game it would be even easier to keep it safe as the field is not as big as well making it easier for the center to be where he needs to be 99% of the time even with 1 AR as long as the Center is even marginally in shape. I'm a big guy, overweight, and I can still make the runs when I need to, to be in position.

I still disagree with moving the AR to the other side on any level game except maybe a Recreation level U10 or below, and honestly I can't even remember the last time I even had AR's in a U10 level or below.  The field size at U12 and below should be sufficiently small enough for 1AR and a Center to be able to handle is without safety issues and the majority of Offside calls to be called correctly despite how lopsided the score is.   Like I said just my opinion and opinions vary.

This is youth soccer so your logic is flawed. Couple years back multiple higher ups in GaSoccer and their head of Refs said player safety is the coaches job, the Refs are only there to enforce the rules.

Um, no.  Pretty much the first point of emphasis at any recert is player safety.  There's an acronym for referee responsibilities.  The first letter is - wait for it - S.  Not soccer, not scoring, but SAFETY.

My first job as an adult in any position of responsibility around kids in any circumstance is to make sure they are safe.

As a ref, that is even more true -- and would be so no matter what GA Soccer said.

But, as others have pointed out, GA soccer has been quite clear that youth safety is the #1 priority.  www.georgiasoccer.org/risk-management/

Saying it and doing it is two different things. Otherwise there would be a way to file complaints against bad Refs to find ways to re-educate and improve them. You can file complaints against players and coaches and admins, and have them suspended or take extra education. But Refs not a thing except some minimal recert course that most Refs don’t even read the rules changes on.

Instead GaSoccer and now SCCL do not care how bad or out of control games get as long as there’s some kind of Ref and the game is made official. ($$$$)