pebkac thoughts

I remember loving Soccer as a little kid. Soccer with a capital S. My dad started playing in grad school, around the time I was born. I started playing when my dad starting coaching. I was five. I was always fairly small among my peers, but on the soccer field that didn’t matter, at least not in the small town where we lived until I turned 13. I even went to the Region One ODP camp (youth Olympic Development Program). After that we moved to Chapel Hill. Actually that was the second time we’d moved to Chapel Hill, but that’s another story. Besides, the first time we came I wasn’t old enough to play anything but rec–challenge/classic and all that were different then.

I stuck with Soccer through my senior year of high school, when a broken bone sidelined me for the last month of my school season. Having gone to NCSSM, I’d given up club soccer the year before. When I got to UNC-CH, I discovered that there were several kinds of soccer. There’s Soccer: the varsity sport. Obviously I wasn’t skilled enough for that level. People from several states away come to be on the B team. There’s also a club team. Arguably I could have warmed the bench or maybe even played for them, but they had a reputation at the time for being dirty and undistinguished. Below that there were several intramural teams I could have joined. I went to one such game and was disappointed more with the attitude (uppity, mean) than the skill level, and the skill level was crap. I jumped ship entirely and started an interesting run as a men’s crew coxswain (you’ll note my nick). I was at the time disgusted by what I saw as poor sportsmanship, so I went for a quintessential gentleman’s sport. Besides, I weighed 123lb and got put in charge of a $30k boat.

All of the above is a rather overlong way of saying this: I gave up soccer and now regret it to some extent, so I make up for it by continuing to be a referee. I first started being a ref at age 13 (I was put in charge of 5-year-olds), so it’s not like I picked this up purely as consolation. I value sportsmanship and I love the memories I have of my childhood soccer games. What better way to keep that alive and give back to the Soccer community than by being a ref?

“But you’re thinking of giving it up?” I hear you ask. Why yes, I am, and for precisely the same reason I did as a freshman in college: the people involved are (not always, but too often) uppity and mean. Here’s the messed up part: it’s the parents. When I go out and ref a game, the oldest I’ll do a center for is 14 and the oldest I’ll line for is 16. At 15 and 16 you do see kids trying to pull ugly crap, but it’s really rare for kids younger than that. The kids gradually get harder to handle–the parents can be horrible starting even with the youngest ones. The last time I went out, I did a center and two lines. The first of the games I lined was horrible. The center had a human moment late in the first half. His mistake couldn’t realistically have affected the outcome of the game, but the parents of one team (who were down by one point) latched onto it and wouldn’t let go. They started with snide comments that eventually grew into heckling. With two minutes left in the game, I heard more than one comment like, “The level of incompetence of the refs around here is just amazing,” from parents sitting just a three feet behind where I was standing. Those were the nice ones.

Protocol would have had me wave my flag to have the center stop the match, at which point I would inform the center that parents were being disruptive. The center would then speak to the coach of the team and have him take action to control the parents. With two minutes left, I decided that it would be counter-productive to extend the match with the interruption, so I didn’t signal, especially since I didn’t think they were being loud enough that it was actually disruptive to the kids.

This kind of thing isn’t normal, but it has happened three times (including this one) in recent memory. One time (the first time) it was clearly my bad call that started things off, since I was the only official (it was a group of challenge-level 10-year-olds). I was shaken, but I learned several valuable lessons and moved on. The next time was a case of parents who just didn’t understand the rules. Offside is impossible to call if you’re not in line with the second-to-last defender. These parents were convinced I didn’t know how to call it and they did, despite the fact that they were sitting 10 yards further down the field than the second-to-last defender at the time the ball was kicked. Parallax is a bitch. So is having to kick two parents off the field (something the center was forced to do with just five minutes left to play).

It’s made more ridiculous by the fact that there aren’t enough referees. At the certification clinics I’ve seen 15- and 16-year olds who subsequently ref three or four games before quitting. My knowledge of this is anecdotal, but I challenge anyone reading this to tell me there’s not a turnover problem among refs and back it up with some numbers. It would be interesting (numbers-wise) to compare it to other entry-level jobs like retail or food service.

In the most recent case, it was obvious that the ref in question had done the wrong thing. The responses by the parents, though… it still makes me shake my head to think that people really believe it’s okay to say stuff like that in front of not only their kids, but a bunch of other people’s children, too. His bad call obviously wasn’t responsible for the fact that their team was down by one, but beyond that: these kids are 11-year-olds! Stop treating them like miniature pros! It pains me to see parents robbing their kids of their innocence so young. These boys won’t hit puberty for another two, maybe even four years. Why the heck do you have to ruin Soccer for them? They don’t know they’re being robbed. Worse than that, they’re being given a false sense of what’s fair, what’s right. When a parent is shouting “Take him out!” to the defenders while an attacker from the opposing team is coming in, you have to wonder. That was in the first minute of the most recent game, too.

It’s painful enough that, despite its rarity, I might let my license lapse. I might give up on Soccer, and that would be really painful. I’ve invested trivial things like time and money in being a ref. It’s feeling like the parents are robbing me of my happy childhood Soccer memories that hurts.