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