Reffed spring and summer and then high school in the fall last year. I didn't have too many issues with parents last year. I did have one coach that was a complete dickhead.

I was reffing his JV team. Basically U17, and here JV games are only allotted two refs or one if they are enough games scheduled. The second time I reffed his team I handed out an extremely deserved red card and he went ballistic on me. Thankfully he had an assistant that was far more knowledgeable about soccer than he was that made him sit down and then listened to my reasoning.

Being a smallish area, I got to ref this asshole's team a few more times. One time I had to solo a game on a full 120x75 yd field. I surely missed calls, but I worked my ass off to cover as much of that field as I could. The problem is that he coaches a very unskilled but slightly athletic team. They were playing a very skilled team that moved the ball well. This combination usually results in the unskilled team committing a lot of fouls, which they did. Enter pissing and moaning coach.

After the game I am leaving and I have to walk past his team's bench as he is addressing his team. He stops mid sentence and says "I am going to wait a little bit to talk about this next part" and then resumes whatever bashing he was doing after I was a few yards away. That dickhead is being a great mentor to a bunch a kids.

This morning, a buddy of mine was telling me about his 8 year old's game last weekend

The team was warming up, and as my buddy put it "The Ref was scouting which kids he was going to card or toss out, before the game even started"

As the parents were gathering the kids to start the game, he shared this observation with his neighbors on his daughter's team, and included the word "Douchebag" ... for the rest of the game, none of the other parents would talk to him

When they got home, he asked his why, why the were icing him out the rest of the day [not like he minded, actually, since he didn't want to go anyway]

"Maybe it's because you use language like 'douchebag?'" she hypothesized

"Fuck 'em" he shrugged

****

Keep in mind, when we shared a cube, I made this poster for our wall

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"What's your claim?" - Ben Gravy
"Your best work is the work you're excited about" - Rick Rubin

I have noticed that some people show up with the notion that the ref is going to screw them over. Then it is easier to justify an abuse of the ref. It's a ridiculous concept to begin with.

Also, if anybody is going to give a card at a U8 game for anything short of punching another player they don't deserve to ref.

Edited to add: Reffing has made me give far more thought to what calls are made and I have a lot more respect for officials. On the other hand, I have also become very critical of techniques and use of the proper procedures of reffing.

Example A: Last fall I watched my fiance's cousin in a high school play off game. In a tie game, the other team scores a goal to take the lead. The AR raises flag for offsides. The ref never looks at his AR, awards the goal and starts back to the center. The players and coach start raising hell and telling him to look at his AR. He ends up giving a yellow to a player and the coach for dissent. Then sees his AR is still standing there holding up the flag. Finally calls the goal back, but those yellow cards still stand. It was absolutely atrocious work all because the ref didn't look at his AR which is the first thing you do after a goal is scored. I was livid and embarrassed that this guy was allowed to ref a play off game.

Yeah it seems like this sometimes. Last Sunday my daughter was playing U15 lacrosse in a pretty competitive match between two rival towns. My daughter's team was down by a few goals but came back to tie it up. While this was happening one dad from the opposition started making sniping comments about every ref call that went against his team, like sarcastically saying in a loud voice, "No surprise there!" The ref certainly was a little whistle-happy, but was clearly not being biased as plenty of calls were going against our team too. I couldn't help thinking though, that if I was the ref I would be sorely tempted to start being slightly biased because of this idiot's comments. You could see his wife cringing as well from his comments as more people looked at him.

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"What's your claim?" - Ben Gravy
"Your best work is the work you're excited about" - Rick Rubin