Watch the video.

Now three simple questions:

1) Was the ball properly put into play,

2) is this a goal and

3) what’s the re-start???

So the ball left the PA, meaning it’s in play. But can you score on yourself from a freekick?
Nope.
Restart with a corner kick.

I sometimes assigning games. Sometimes I assign a lot of games. I had just finished assigning 200 games for a weekend tournament. ~80 officials, lots of hours on the computer putting people on games, working around other peoples schedules. Plenty of time on the phone making sure that people knew they had games. Worried every time the phone rang that someone was turning back games. All in all not a lot of fun. Assigning officials to games, contrary to what you may think of what you’ve heard is really not all that much fun. But, there’s most always a but, the tourny or just the games them selves are worth it. I was looking forward to working with, hanging out with, the ~80 officials I had assigned to the tourny.

Problem was that we had 6th wettest April ever and I think it fell mostly in the last 2 weeks. The fields were like sponges sitting in the lack of sun not drying out. At 10:30am, 31 hours before the first games was to kick off we were told that we could not use the fields. I was pretty sure when I was told, that it was a joke. I even asked, “Are you joking?”. No joke, no tournament. After a few well chosen words, I told my son that he didn’t have any games for the weekend. He was a little pissed at that. I then got on the computer and sent out an email to all the officials about the change in their weekend. Phoned a number of them that I thought might not see the email. Thought about the timing, I was putting together a shopping list of food to buy for the weekend. That was $400 worth; saved that for the club. Somewhat depressed I went about my day, wondering what I was going to do with my free weekend. When it did arrive I was waiting for a call that it was all a joke and where were all the officials. The call never came, thank God(s). As it turned out I learned over the weekend that a simple screw can raise a roof on a garage. So I got that going for me.

My son decided that he wanted too try officiating soccer. He’s 13 and has been subjected to the a soccer officials life style, by proximity, his whole life. I was an instructor at an entry level clinic one weekend and he figured he would start there. He did some studying and practice tests the week before and passed the final test with a score right on the class average.

Because of weather he didn’t get a chance to try out his new knowledge for 2 months. We got him the basic start-up uniform, to quote from him after putting it on the first time, “I look good in this”. Well, we head out to the fields for a u10 girls game that he would work AR1 and I was supposed to center. As fate would have it I had to do some shuffling of officials and ended up in the middle of a u17 boys game two fields over from the u10 girls game. I spent the first 15 mins of my game trying to watch his game to see how he was doing, in true stage dad form. In the end his game ended well before the end of mine. It was great to see him on the sideline of my game with a smile on his face. Unknowingly reassuring me that everything went well in his first game. We talked after the games about how things went and how things might go in the future.

He’s got about 6 to 8 games under his belt now and hasn’t really had anyone yell at him yet. I’m thinking of getting someone to give him some stick at his next game. Prolly not though, it will come with time, sadly. I do puff up working with him and I’m trying had not to be stage/soccer dad nightmare