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[quote=Anonymous][quote=RantingSoccerDad][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=RantingSoccerDad][quote=Anonymous]VYS announced a winter outdoor house league. Are other clubs going to do this also?[/quote]

Cool -- more reffing work.[/quote]
Hey RSD, you said you are a referee.  Can you as a referee send a parent to the parking lot? Can you even address parents? Do you have any authority over parents? Or can you only ask the coach to deal with parents and if the cis h doesn’t, then you can give the coach a card? What power do you have to control parents? Does it vary by state? By league?[/quote]

Or start a new thread called "I'm a Referee AMA" to not take over this one.[/quote]

Good point!

But I'll answer quickly -- the guidance we receive is muddled. The only time it has come for me was at the WAGS Tournament this year, where our field supervisor had mysteriously disappeared. Without going into detail, I didn't handle it as well as I should have -- I should've gone straight to the coach -- but when two parents were on the verge of throwing down, I felt obliged to send them away without delay.

It doesn't come up in the youngsters' VYS games I ref. The only interaction I can remember with a parent was actually this past weekend, when a dad was five yards out on the field yelling at his kid. I gently suggested that he not do that. [/quote]

Not a ref - but in my experience of watching refs refereeing youth soccer there are only two errors which I put in the category of disasters.

1.  A ref who loses his temper.  This is the #1 sin a ref can commit.  Above all he needs to stay calm and maintain his sense of humor.  That doesn't mean he shouldn't be firm - but he must stay calm and professional.  Nearly all the "crazy" stuff I've seen over the years has occurred when the ref has allowed events to cause them to get riled up.  For example, when you have a crazy coach who gets bent out of shape, a good ref defuses the situation before he has to hand out a red card.  A bad ref escalates the problem into a macho-posturing competition and ends up handing out a red card.  This same situation can occur with players and parents.  The bottom line is that the ref should never be shouting at anyone.  In my view - once the ref starts shouting - he's doing his job wrong.

2.  The center circle ref.  When a ref doesn't stay close enough to the play he makes a lot of errors.  Most refs - even ones that don't know the rules perfectly - will make enough calls and mostly get them right to maintain control of the game.  But a ref who never gets more than a few yards from the center of the field misses a huge percentage of calls - he calls things he shouldn't and fails to call things he should.  The kids get very frustrated fairly quickly and can take things into their own hands - at which point the ref starts handing out cards - but that just makes things worse because he's still blowing the calls - handing out cards when there's been no foul and failing to blow his whistle at all when a card is deserved, and the game spirals totally out of control.

The worst ref I ever saw combined both of these and ended up with more than a dozen cards handed out in the space of twenty minutes, kids screaming at the ref, the ref screaming back and the ref fist pumping when one team scored a goal.  Sadly the tournament officials sided with the ref and expelled the team which got most of the yellow cards from the tournament - but - while the kids clearly didn't cover themselves in glory - in my view the situation was 90% the ref's fault.

When it comes to parents I think the ref should avoid any interaction as far as he possibly can.  Obviously if the parent is on the field then you must ask him to move.  And doing it gently is definitely the best way to do so :-).  And I would suggest that even two parents getting into a punch up is not a good place for a ref to be.  Much better - as you suggest - for the coaches to sort this out.  The ref could perhaps stop the game until the situation is resolved - but anything more than that is likely a mistake.
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