Room for Improvement

Tuesday afternoon, the gym teacher at one of the high schools in town asked me if I would referee a soccer match.

The high school is in the middle of athletic competitions between the different grades. Each grade has a girls’ basketball and a male soccer team. They play against the other grades.

The school makes a big deal about this. Every team gets their own jerseys, and there is a special schedule (some schools cancel classes for the week)

I can only imagine how this would have gone over at my high school.

What is this rosh chodesh? It’s like it happens every month.

Considering how much people care about these games, I was kind of surprised when the gym teacher asked me to referee an actual game of consequence.

I mean, why would I be a suitable candidate to referee this game?

But then I looked at him, and he was pretty exhausted. Plus, he looked like he wanted to laugh a bit. That is where I come in.

As a North American, I don’t really know too much about what the responsibilities and standard practice is for a soccer referee. Franklin Baseball umping didn´t prepare me for this. Where am I supposed to stand? Do I blow the whistle every time is goes out of bounds? How do we decide who starts with the ball?

I know that it is commonplace in club soccer for the ref to wrapped up in some kind of match-fixing scandal. Is someone going to offer me a bag of mangos to call it in their favor?

I also don’t really know if I’m supposed to call a foul every time I see a kid flopping on the ground, or if I should let them play a bit. Well, as you may know, I am kind of bitter about all the flopping that occurs in soccer. So you might guess that I was a bit lax when it comes to blowing the whistle. One might even wonder whether or not I had actually swallowed the whistle. If it’s bleeding, that means you fell on the ground. If it’s black and blue or I can see bone, then there might have possibly been a foul.



I probably should have explained this policy to them before the game, because they were flopping all over the place. And, well, I didn’t see the need to blow the whistle.

So after about eight minutes on mute, the gym teacher was fed up with the silence and decided he should take over.

He called to the bullpen and finished the game for me. He said that I will get another chance. Thursday, they have basketball games. I will be sure to explain my “let the players decide the game, not the refs” policy.

Eight minutes wasn’t bad for the first time. We’ll improve next time (Can I make a “that’s what she said” joke? I noticed this when reading over the blog again, so I didn’t write it in real time