SchwartzBlog

So today was my first varsity game. For those of you who do not know, I don’t play any varsity sports. No, I am a high school soccer referee. So when I say I had my first varsity game, I mean for the first time I officiated a soccer game where the players were either my age or maybe a little older. And the game was great. I initially got a few weird looks from the players and coaches when I stepped on the field (They had never seen a 17 year old varsity ref, they probably had never even seen a 37 year old varsity ref). But my calls spoke for themselves. After 10 or 15 minutes it didn’t matter my age. The calls that needed to be made, were made. And the game was a success. It has been 6 years since Jerry Fischoff came up to me and asked me if I wanted to become a travel referee. Now I am here. And I still have a ways to go.

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I have been a referee for 6 years now. It has completely changed my life. So this summer I finally convinced my brother to certify as a referee as well. And since then I got him all the top gear, took him to watch my games, and even ran through some game simulations with him. Anything to get him ready.

Now to anybody who thinks being a referee is easy, you are out of your mind. It’s really easy to yell at the ref when your sitting in your lawn chair, or better yet, your couch while watching the game on TV. The reality is, officiating is tough. Your decisions need to be spot on and they need to happen instantaneously. And as you climb ages, your margin for error declines significantly. Which is why it has taken me this long to get to Varsity (my first varsity game is tuesday, ill keep you updated on that after it happens). But yesterday was dan’s first day. And he did great. I mean, not great like he could do U15 tomorrow, but great as in a lot better than me on my first day. Now in my defense, he is 15 and I was 11 my first game. But anyway, back to this kid. He was great. And the first thing he said after his first game was “this was harder than I thought” he later told me that he originally thought it was going to be a cake walk, and boy was he wrong. I’m not going to go into real details about why he was good or bad just because I want to wait a few weeks until he gets better. Plus, I’m writing this at 11:53pm and im tired.

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I was talking to a friend of mine (conversation is relevant but private so I am not going to go into it) and we got onto the topic of why we have done certain activities. He said that he had participated in one of his activities because no one else did. Because he didn’t want to be near certain people. And it got me seriously thinking…

So most of you know that I participate in a lot of activities that you wouldn’t normally see a kid doing. One of those is being a referee. Being a referee has defined me as a person. I started with recreation and 9 year old travel games, and as of next month I will referee my first non-scrimage Varsity soccer game. It is a big deal for me. But when people ask me why I started it is difficult for me to give them a straight answer.

The truth of the matter is that I was running lines (the guy with the flags on the sidelines) for my brother’s soccer game a while back and the mentor for the current referee saw my enthusiasm and asked me if I wanted to take the course. I did and the rest is history. But I know there is more to it than that.

So here is why I think I became a referee.

1) I wanted to get out of the house. Weekends for me were all about TV. It kind of sucked. I wanted an activity that I could constantly look forward to.

2) My dad wouldn’t give me a bigger allowance. In addition, some money I got for birthday’s and other things my parents would not give me access to. Now I will also say that my parents had my best interests at heart when they did that, but at the age of 12 I didn’t really care, I just wanted money that I could call my own.

3) I can say this now because it is no longer true, but I have a feeling that I also enjoyed the power of being a referee. I remember a few months after I was offered to take the course (but before I took the course) I saw a referee throw my brother’s coach out of the game. I liked it and I ended up becoming good friends with that referee. I liked having control. But that mindset was not a good one. Those power trips that I took got me into trouble many times. It also almost ended my referee career more than once. And that referee that I became good friends with, is no longer a referee because he got into to many arguments with people. But nonetheless It still is a reason.

4) Kids were not referee’s. It just didn’t happen. Even now, at 17, I am still the youngest ref to do high school level games. When I did travel, I was (one of the) youngest to do travel. I am the youngest referee mentor. It deals with my maturity level. I liked doing activities that adults did.

5) Kids were not referee’s. No this is not a duplicate. In all honesty I was not the most popular kid when I was younger. Im still not the most popular kid, but it is much better than what it was. I thought that I couldn’t get along with most kids. The truth was I couldn’t get along with most people in general. But I thought it was just kids. So I did this so I would not be around people I know, people that made fun of me.

At the end of the day, I was only 11 years old when I was offered the referee course and there is no way that any of these thoughts went through my head when I made the decision to do it. But I think subconsciously I think these ideas were what made me take that course and continue to be a referee to this day.

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